Bryant centennial, Cummington, August the sixteenth, 1894 : November the third, 1794 - November the third, 1894

1

€(^xm\\ Winivmii^ ^ihxm^

y;m\ ^df^^jJvmA'i ") ..Idij^vmU-fi-skL^

u

678-2

,*'

Cornell University Library
PS 1185.B91 1894

Bryant centennial, CumHiinSlonj, .AHS.y?',.!!^^^

3 1924 022 052 413

'^,

ipy (16 , cK.o-^i^eJ- I

44^iyMC <1L■y^^<^ ^4.pl^^ ,

mu.fr:h:(i)rs,.^Jt;.

Cornell University
Library

The original of tiiis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022052413

i/>it Z *x.; I L I ^L ^-^^-t,./ ? t. /y ^S , / f/C^

r '

BRYANT CENTENNIAL
CUMMINGTON

AUGUST THE SIXTEENTH

1894

NOVEMBER THE THIRD NOVEMBER THE THIRD

1794 1894

/\.^-7o^^3

Clark W. Bbtan Co. Pbint^kb,
Sprin&fiblt>, MA89.

TO JULIA S. BRYANT

TO THE READER.

No word of introduction can add to the beauty or completeness
of the tributes contained in this little volume. To many of the
present generation, Bryant is still a gracious memory, but when
the time shall arrive, in which his name and work is only a tradi-
tion to the inhabitants of his native town, and another centenary
is reached, the curious antiquary or the devoted pilgrim, who seeks
the spot where the first centennial was remembered, may wish to
trace its landmarks, and some record of it may then be found
needful.

At the annual town meeting it was voted to observe the hun-
dredth anniversary of Bryant's birth by a literary festival, and a
committee of five of the citizens was appointed to carry out this
design.

The occasion was unique, not many days of the kind having
been celebrated, for Bryant's birth marked the beginning of Ameri-
can Poetry, and American Literature was still in its childhood one
hundred years ago. The day chosen was August sixteenth, as the
pleasant summer time was, deemed more suitable for an outdoor
gathering, than the day of November on which the poet was born,
which is often bleak and forbidding in its aspect. The spot selected
had already become historic, for the poet and his brothers had
traced, upon the trees around, rude hieroglyphics in years long past.

In a maple grove northwest of the Bryant homestead, where the
younger children were born and all were reared, a central platform
was raised and surrounded by seats rising from the front in the

form of an amphitheater. Upon a hickory tree, around which the
platform was built, a lithograph portrait of Bryant was hung, en-
circled with wreaths and adorned with pendant sumac boughs.
Around a table, banked with golden-rod and asters, were grouped
some of America's most distinguished men of letters, who had
come from far places to honor the memory of one who was one of
America's first citizens as well as Cummington's foremost son.
Nature smiled upon the da\' and the event, which was made mem-
orable by the number of people who were present, — about five
thousand climbing from all points, and from the towns in the dis-
tant valleys, to this remote hilltop. At ten o'clock a bird's-eye
view would have presented a novel sight, when every approach, as
far as the eye could see, was filled with slowly moving vehicles,
until nearly a thousand had arrived, from the modern tally-ho to
the improvised farm wagon, its sides trimmed with hemlock boughs.
Through the arched entrance, trimmed with evergreens, the ex-
pectant crowd passed quickly to the grove, filling the seats, while
some hundreds grouped themselves around these. The clouds
lightly floating above and the sunlight glinting through the foliage
upon the upturned faces, made the scene not only picturesque but
impressive. The presence of the one surviving brother of the
poet, and his only remaining daughter, added interest to the occa-
sion, and the choice of his son-in-law as president of the day gave
added dignity to the anniversary, which in itself was of the greatest
interest to the people of this region. After the memorial address
and songs, the people scattered in groups, to partake of their
basket lunches. Some sought the " Rivulet," some the " Entrance
to the Wood," or other haunts which suggested the lines of the
poet, and the holiday aspect was in keeping with the simplicity and
naturalness of the poet's life.

The dinner for the two hundred invited guests was served in the
apple orchard nearly opposite the spacious barns, in the green
carpeted passages formed by the rows of trees. After the colla-
tion had been served, again the people gathered in the grove to
listen to the addresses of the afternoon, given in a somewhat
lighter vein than those of the morning, interspersed with appro-
priate music, and at five o'clock the multitude departed with pleas-
ant memories of this day of days, and we whose glad privilege it
was to execute the wishes of the townspeople, hasten to make this
lasting record before swift-footed time shall render such a work
impossible.

MY NATIVE VALE.

There stands a dwelling in a peaceful vale,

With sloping hills and waving woods around,
Fenced from the blast. There never ruder gale

Bows the tall grass that covers all the ground ;
And planted shrubs are there, and cherished flowers,
And brightest verdure born of gentle showers

'Twas there my young existence was begun ;

My earliest sports were on its flowery green ;
-And often, when my schoolboy lask was done,

I climbed its hills to view the pleasant scene.
And stood and gazed till the sun's setting ray
Shone on the height— the sweetest of the day.

There, when that hour of mellow light was conic.
And mountain shadows cooled the ripened grain,

I saw the weary yeoman plodding home
In the lone path that winds across the plain,

To rest his limbs, and watch his child at play

And tell him o'er the labors of the day.

And when the woods put on their autumn glow.

And the bright sun shone in among the trees,
.\nd leaves were gathered in the den below.

Swept softly from the hillside by the breeze,
I wandered, till the starlight, on the stream.
At length awoke me from my fairy dream.

,Ah ! happy days, too happy to return.

Fled on the wings of youth's departed years ,
A bitter lesson has been mine to learn,

The truth of life, its labors, pains and fears.
Yet does the memory of my boyhood sray,
A twilight of the brightness passed away.

,Mv thoughts steal back to that dear dwelling still.
Its flowers and peaceful shades before me rise ;

The play-place and the prospect from the hill.
Its summer verdure and autumnal dyes ;

The present brings its storms, but, while they last

I shelter seek in the delightful past.

John Howard Hrvant.

PROGRAMME

Wednesday Evening,

AT 7.30 o'clock.

Children's Memorial Exercises by the Bryant School and others jt the
Congregational Church.

Thursda'i Morning,

AT 10 o'clock.

March, " Washington Post," .'iou/,a

ORCHESTR.V.

PRAYER.

Anthem, " Sing ye Jehovah's praises. "

Address of Welcome, Lorenzo H. Tower.

Address hv President, Parke Godwin

Memorial Address, Kdwin R. Brown.
Duet, "O deem not they are blest alone,"

Julie A. Shaw, Henrietta S. Nahmek.

Reading, .. xh^Rivufet," John H. Bryant.

Chorus, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic'

PROGKAMMH

THURSIrA^' At I KkNi i(J\.

AT ■> O'n oi K

MflRi II, "()|ij HiiriieMeail,"

ORCHHSI KA.

Reading of Letters by the Shi KKTAK^.
(.'HoRiis, "A F.irevt Retreat."

. ADDKl'.SStS

Hon. John Bigeluw,

Julia Ward I iowc,

Charles Dudlir\ \\ arner.
Duet. " Old Friends are the Fruesl."

John W. Hutchinson, t Le.ster Hkown.

Reading, At Eighty-seven, John H. Hryant.

A1)1iK1vSn1':s.
Prof. Charles E. Norton,

Rev. John \V. Chadvvick,

George W, Cable.
Chorus, "The Oaks." Verdi.

ADDRKSSES.
I'tes. G. Stanley Hall,

A. .M. Howe, Esq.,

Il.i.rv S Gere.

INVOCATION.

By Rkv. John White Chadwick.

" Blessings be on them and eternal praise,

Who gave us nobler lives and nobler cares ;

The poets who on earth have made us heirs

Of truth and puie delight by heavenly lays."

O Thou who art the life and heart of all this breathing world ;
we come together in a temple made by Thine own hands, to thank-
fully remember one who looked through Nature up to Thee, who
found Thy visible presence in the strength of Thy eternal hills,
Thy beauty in the trees and streams, Thy voice in the deep breath-
ings of the storm, and in the silence of the night.

We thank Thee for the songs he sung, and that he made his life
a great and noble poem, epical with a lofty purpose, and lyrical
with many tender passages of love and home.

We are glad and thankful for those happy influences which issued
from his life and work, opening our eyes to see the beauty and our
hearts to feel the wonder of the fair and perfect world, and plead-
ing with us to make ourselves the servants of all high causes, even
such as make for the enlightenment and exaltation of our individual
and common life. We thank Thee, O God, for all Thy poets who
by their song have cheered and glorified our human lot, and
especially for that noble company in our own land, of which our
own Bryant was the eldest brother and of which one only now
remains.

Very tenderly would we think of him to-day, desiring for him
every blessing that belongs to the old age of one who has so often
with sweet, guileless laughter cheered our burdened hearts. May
this time of grateful recollection consecrate us, each and all, to a
more wise and serious affection for the great things of nature and
of art, and a more serene devotion to the welfare of our fellow-men.

Vi

We offer Thee, O God, these thanks and these desires with some-
thing of that proud humility which befits the children of Thy
house. Amen.

After the invocation an orchestra of stringed instruments, ac-
companied by an organ, performed one of Sousa's marches, which
was followed by the anthem, " Sing ye Jehovah's praises," ren-
dered by a local chorus.

ADDRESS OF WELCOME.

By Lorenzo H. Tower.

It was thought that a short address of welcome by a native resi-
dent of the town would be expected in accordance with the usual
custom on occasions like this. It would seem proper that the
host's welcome should be by deeds, not words, and a proper prepa-
ration to receive his guests. If this has been done, words of wel-
come are unnecessary ; if neglected, any address, however eloquent,
would be of no account. In applying this test, due consideration
of the ability of the host and the number and wants of his guests
should be kept in mind. Ours is a small mountain town, contain-
ing eight hundred souls all told, remote from the principal lines of
travel, with limited hotel accommodations ; and with the expecta-
tion that every home would be filled with personal and family
friends, the prospect was not good for a successful result to-day.

With these and other disabilitities may we not indulge the hope
that you will be charitable with our shortcomings. The welcome
that Cummington extends to you to-day is substantially the same
as greeted the embryo poet one hundred years ago. That the peo-
ple are the same in kind is proven by the fact that of the two
hundred voters in town but three are of foreign birth ; the quality
may have deteriorated, as the flower of our sons and daughters
have gone forth to enrich other communities, nearly every home
having furnished its full quota. There are but few of us left, but
these few are willing to stand up and be counted.

Of the families that have lived at the Bryant Homestead for the
last one hundred years, the first sent forth five sons and one daugh-
ter to make their homes outside of the town ; of these but one
remains to be with us to-day. Of the second, three sons and one
daughter sought other homes, and from this family two are here
to meet old friends. From the third, one daughter by adoption is
with us to-day. This is perhaps an exceptional case, but it shows

the tendency of the population to leave the hill towns. Many
homes have been abandoned, and their location is marked by a
hollow in the ground where once was a cellar. In some parts of
the town it is possible to find as many of these as of homes.

The occupation of the people is the same as of old, living wide
apart to cultivate the soil, that is none too free with its return for
the labor that is bestowed upon it.

The Westfield flows through its narrow valley ; the little villages
nestle by its side as in the past ; the amphitheater of hills and val-
leys that girt the eastern horizon are the same that Bryant's first
conscious vision looked upon ; the little brooks still murmur
through their narrow glens ; the groves, the darker woods, the
sunny slopes where wild flowers bloom, all are here still to inspire
other poets. The home that sheltered our poet from infancy to
early manhood, the home to which he turned when fortune had
smiled and the frost of age was upon hair and beard, making of it
a fit place to spend a short season each year to renew his acquaint-
ance with nature "through her \isible forms," free from the cares
of an exacting profession.

To all of these we welcome you ; without these nothing we could
say or do would be worthy of a moment's consideration by you.

May we not hope that when time has softened your remembrance
of the discomforts and fatigue of the journey, you may not wholly
regret that in 1894 you made the pilgrimage to Cummington, to the
home of Bryant, one of the best of his race, one of the poets of
the world.

REMARKS

Of J \V. GuRNEY, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements on Opening
the Exercises at the Bryant Centennial Celebration.

Ladies and Gentlemen :

We have assembled here this beautiful summer morning to cele-
brate the hundredth anniversary of an event that has made this
historic ground. These valleys, these wooded hills, the little spark-
ling rivulet that goes leaping and laughing down the mountain side,
have all been immortalized by the pen of Bryant. Some one living
in what he imagined to be a more favored region has slightingly
remarked that all our " New England hills were good for was to help
hold the world together; that their principal productions were ice
and granite.''

Well, I have always believed they played an important part in
the earth's make-up, and they furnish plenty of ice and granite for
home consumption, and yet they boast grander products. We raise
men and women who are constantly going out from us, taking with
them New England's best gifts, virtue, intelligence and industry.

New England's hills, old earth's mainstay —

Steadfast and reliant —
Let it forever be their boast

That they produced a Bryant.

My friends, you have gathered here from many sections of our
great country, to unite with us in honoring the name and memory
of Cummington's noblest , son, and as the centuries follow each
other down time's calendar, the people of Cummington will ever
cherish the memory of William Cullen Bryant. But the name of
Bryant is not the heritage of Cummington alone ; it is the birth-
right of every American citizen, and in arranging the programme
of these exercises we have not confined ourselves to any section,

16

or been restrained by any boundary lines. We are exceedingly
fortunate in having with us to-day a gentleman whose intimate
social and business relations with Mr. Bryant for many years make
it eminently fitting that he should take a prominent part in these
exercises. I now have the distinguished honor of introducing to
you Mr. Parke Godwin, as president of the day.

Parke Godwin, President of the Day.

ADDRESS.

I'.Y I'RKSIDENT I'ARKE (JUDWIN.

Ladies' and Gentlemen :

Dr. Samuel Johnson said that "the man is little to be envied
whose patriotism would not gain force on the plain of Marathon,
or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Zona."

He meant by this that localities acquire by mere historic asso-
ciation a power which stirs the minds and r.earts of men to their
fountains. Such a locality is this, and assuredly, no American can
visit these hills without feeling his whole nature exalted by the
consciousness that here one of the first and most eminent of Ameri-
can poets, one of the first and most energetic of American citizens,
\\'illiam Cullen Bryant, was born. It was here, a hundred years
ago, that his infant eyes first opened to the light of the heavens ;
here that his childish limbs first tottered among the flowers of the
earth, and here that he first played upon the banks of the rivulet,
which prattled from grove to grove while he cropped the violets
from its brim, and listened to the brown thrush's vernal hymn. It
was here that he turned his first artless notes to the whisper of the
wind, or to the song of the birds ; it was here, amid this scenery,
which combines so much that is grand with so much that is beauti-
ful, that he imbibed that love of nature which made him, in after
life, her most faithful painter, knowing every tree, every flower, every
spire of grass, every sound of the winged tribes, and every play of
the winds among the trees, every aspect of the seasons, the luxuriant
fullness of summer, the melancholy yet many-colored decay of
autumn, and even the charm of winter, when the bleak blast dis-
robes the forests, and oceans of snow had almost drowned the
landscape, but the sunrises and sunsets were yet as glorious as any
of Italy, and the delicate fingers of the frost built in the woods its
palaces of amethyst and topaz. It was here, lying before the even-

18

ing birch fire, that he read the Bible and Shakespeare, Homer as
Pope gives him, and Cowper and Wordsworth ; it was here, among
the thickets, that he shouted to his brothers grand lines from the
Iliad or the CEdipus Tyrrannus ; it was here that he heard from the
lips of veterans who had taken part in the strife, the stories of
Bunker Hill and Concord and Trenton and Saratoga ; it was here
that he caught the first bitterness of politics, as thundered around
the name of Jefferson, and it was here that he learned the better
lessons taught by nature's "sweet and gentle ministrations."

It was from this place went forth the first articulate poetic utter-
ance of the great soul of the western world, Thanatopsis, grave and
sombre in its theme suggested by the immense and impenetrable
solitude of the wilderness around, where the silent work of death
is ever going on, as it has been from the beginning and will be to
the end of time, but treated with such rare depth and breadth of
thought, with such brilliancy of imagination and with such an
organ flow of music, it has captivated the universal human mind
and imbedded and enshrined itself in immortal memory. Thana-
topsis was the morning star of our poetic dawn, opening the way
to the broader day that was to follow ; but in the flush and efful-
gence of a broader light, but still holding its place in the skies as
a luminary that is destined never to set.

But the mere active life of Mr. Bryant was not passed amid
these solitudes which, while they nourished his genius by their
many appeals to the imagination, to fancy, to reverence and to
thought, could not supply his more practical needs. He must go
into the larger world which lay beyond their summits, and sad was
the hour when he was compelled to leave them. It was in the
early winter of the year when alone, without prosperity and almost
without friends, he took his way up yonder steep road to Plainfield,
to enter the unknown yet inviting vortex of actual combat. His
heart was despondent, but a lustrous sunset sufl^used the mountains
and he saw a solitary bird making its flight through the desert and
illimitable air, to its far home among the reeds, and he thought

19

•" There is a Power whose care teaches thy way along that pathless
coast," and it came to him as a solace and support, that

" He who from zone to zone

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright."

And that Power did lead him aright when he was launched upon
that vast ocean of struggle and turmoil and toil which is ever
•seething in the metropolis of a nation.

I was much impressed some years ago in an interview with John
Bright, when he told me that he " never went to bed without read-
ing some of the poets, to lure his mind away from the distrac-
tions of Parliament — which is often a cockpit — and to invigorate
his imagination," and he added, " I read your poets in prefer-
ence to ours, not because they are greater poets, but because
they are greater citizens. Your Bryant, your Emerson, your Long-
fellow, )'our Whittier, and your Lowell take part in the common
life of the nation, and all are better poets because they are com-
pleter men."

Their inspiration comes not from the society in which they
live, and has the freshness and impulse of liberty, nature and the
present age.

This was particularly true of Mr. Bryant, who from his childhood
to his old age mingled in the active life of the public. From the
time in which he sang his crude Fourth of July odes and as a boy
satirized Jefferson, to the time in which he upheld the arms of
Lincoln during the war, and deplored his death in a dirge, whose
■words like flight of angels lulled our aching hearts, he held it to
be one of his first duties to participate in all the movements which
influenced the politics of the state. He went down into the arena
and grappled with the fighters. But in every struggle he kept his
eye steadily fixed on certain ideas, which like the Star of the Pole
keeps its old unvarying station. Other stars rise and set, or file
away in glittering trains, to sink ultimately behind the horizon, but
that star is the unfailing guide of the half-wrecked mariner when his

20

compass is lost, and assures the steps of those who stray in darkest
wastes by night. To Mr. Bryant, that guiding star was his convic-
tion of duty to the development and good of the individual man.

He was no doctrinaire, for he always pursued even ideal ends
through actual a\ailable means, but one trust seemed clearer to
him than any other and that was that the aim of all religion, of all
morals, of all social progress was the elevation and upraising of
man to the full dignity of his nature. And he inferred that such
should be the final aim of all politics.

Mr. Brj'ant was the advocate from the beginning of his public
career of perfect freedom of speech and of assembly; he was the
enemy, from the beginning, of that hideous system of slavery
which had got the nation in its clutch, and he was ever the sedu-
lous, considerate and irrepressible opponent of that other system
of industrial servitude, which under the pretext of general protec-
tion fosters special trades, monopolies and trusts, lures a pernicious
immigration and prepares the way for di\'ision of classes and
anarchical outbreaks and bloodshed. In the defense of these
views Mr. Bryant was cast into the furnace of debate, where his
sensitive, nervous organization suffered severely, but he controlled
himself with moderation and contributed as much as any other
one man to the triumph of liberal principles, in the release of his
fellow-men from a degrading bondage. In these efforts he was in
advance of his day, for the battle is not yet won ; but he lived to
see an emancipated race, a regenerated union, and the republic of
his love, the mightiest power upon earth and destined to be mightier,
as the freedom which he advocated shall extend its benificent arms
to broader circles of activity.

It is not my province, upon this occasion, to speak in detail of
this public career, which was at once so eminent and so exemplary.
That theme has been reserved for other and more eloquent lips.
But as it has been the one great good fortune of my life to be as-
sociated with Mr. Bryant privately for more than fifty years, I can-
not refrain from saying a word of what I deem greater than the
poet, greater than the publicist, greater than the patriot, and that

21

is the source and substance of all the rest — the man. As a brother
poet, Whittier, has written : —

" We praise not no.v the poet's art,
The rounded beauty of his song ;
Wlio weighs him from his life apart,
Must do his nobler natufe wrong."

Every clay that I saw him, whether in his domestic circle, or
amid the vicissitudes of trying public contests (and he lived
through the terrible battle era of the Republic), added to my esti-
mate of his completeness as a human being. Modest he was with
the shyness of the sensitive young girl who like a violet had passed
the days in silence and shade; humble he was with the humility of
one who asked no applause from his fellows, and disinterested to
the part of an almost absolute self-negation ; and yet with so strong
a sense of self-respect, so earnest a worship of truth, so unswerv-
ing a fidelity to his convictions, that he feared no enmity, no
calumny, no loss of ease or fame, in the discharge of what he
deemed his duty. A world in arms against him had no terrors
for his simple soul.

Mr. Bryant was deemed by many to be cold in his manner, even
to chilliness. Among strangers he was singularly reserved. But
once you broke through this atmosphere of reticence, you found
in the inside the genial humorist- who loved fun, the warm-hearted
comrade, and a keen sympathizer with all sorts of human suffering
and sorrow.

His affections were not demonstrative, but they were sincere and
profound. To his children he was the cheerful companion, and
they loved him none the less because of their reverence for him.
One affection indeed ran like a silver lining through all the tissues
of his being, from the time when first he met his Fanny,

" The fairest of the rural maids
Whose birth was in the forest shades.''

All his personal attachments, though slow in their formation,
once formed were like hooks of steel. He never abandoned a
friend ; he never, if he could help it, misjudged an enemy. Once

22

when he had been severely calumniated by a newspaper opponent
he said to me, " Will you not answer that fellow ? I dislike him so
much I may do him an injustice." His purse was ever open to a
charity; not always, in the exuberance of his pity, judicious.
Hundreds were uniting to say, when he was gone, that their saintly
providence was lost. I do not know in history a more impressive
picture than that which is furnished by the old age of Mr. Bryant
gliding " in long serenity away." In easy circumstances, the ac-
knowledged patriarch of our literature, the idol not merely of
friends, but of a wide public, every day he gave to some honorable
or useful occupation, to a translation of Homer, to a patriotic ad-
dress, to a cheery feast to the children of the village, to a great
meeting for the furtherance of human welfare, to a letter of en-
couragement to some struggling young author, or to the reading
and review of some good recent books. A friend at Roslyn, who
walked with him on his last Sunday on earth, says :

" I turned to take my leave and saw him standing bareheaded in
the sun, his face towards the sparkling waters of the bay, his white
locks and beard just moved by the passing breeze and he looking
like one of the bards of the Bible, in the rapture of devotion ; or
better still as an image of Homer himself listening to the murmur-
ing waves of his own blue ^gean.''

Mr. Bryant died in his eighty-fourth year, and the last words that
he uttered in public were in aspiration for the coming of that uni-
versal religion and soul liberty when the rights and dislikes of
human brotherhood shall be acknowledged by all the races of
mankind.

The chief address of the day was given by Edwin R. Brown,
one of Cummington's sons, who was especially fitted by good liter-
ary taste and judgment and the associations of many years, to per-
form this delicate and important task.

Edwin R. Brown, Orator of the Day.

MEMORIAL ADDRESS.

By I'.DWiN R. Ekown.

Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen :

" I stand upon my native hills again.

Inroad, round and green, that in the summer sl<y

With garniture of waving grass and grain,
Orchards, and beechen forests, basking lie,

While deep the sunless glens are scooped between.
Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.

" This mountain wind ! most spiritual thing of all
The wide earth knows ; when, in the sultry time

He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall
He seems the breath of a celestial clime !

As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow
Health and refreshment un the world below."

"Perfect love casteth out fear." Otherwise how should I find
courage to speak in such a presence as graces this platform this
morning ? I am not here to speak to you as a literatus at all, but
rather to talk with you from the standpoint of that great public
which has never ranged far in the nourishing fields of literature,
but which long ago learned to love Bryant and to feel its indebt-
edness to him for eyes to see the face and ears to hear the voice
of naturei

To-day the fountains of joy and tears lie side by side and their
waters intermingle. Our tears sparkle with joy and our rejoicing
is pathetic. Salutation quickly turns to valediction, for to most of
us this occasion will be a dissolving view of these dear scenes,
where cluster and twine the memories of delightful years.

We are gathered here from distant states, and from over sea, for
mutual congratulation, while we look across one of those broad
billows of time that we call centuries, and recall the life of Cum-
mington's foremost son, a wonderful life in a wonderful century.
Of the group of large-brained and stout-hearted brothers and

24

sisters of whom William CuUen Bryant was the bright particular
star, all were born amid these rural scenes, and here they passed
their youth. They scattered widely in their life work, but as time
thinned their numbers and whitened their locks, you have seen the
decreasing group returning here in summer days, venerable white-
bearded druids, seeking their early forest haunts and re-living the
days of youth. Now there remains of them all "on this bank and
shoal of time " one only, to join in our commemoration, only one,
a solitary picturesque and pathetic figure, the last of a splendid
generation.

The chief of that group found well-earned fame and fortune in
the great metropolis ; the rest with their feet planted on the fair
prairies of Illinois and their heads in the wide upper currents of
free thinking and noble living, grew straight and tall and strong.
The inevitable reaper has spared us John Howard Bryant, and
thank Heaven he is with us to-day in a fair state of health. '' Full
of days " and good works, honored and beloved, he carries off his
eighty-seven years with brain unscathed and a brave and cheerful
spirit. " Winter is on his head, but eternal sunshine is in his
heart." Long may his departure be delayed !

I see in this gathering little of the Cummington of old. The
honored and beloved, the tried and true of the old days are mostly
sleeping under the mountain turf. But the well-remembered out-
line of the grand old hills and vales remains as it was when the
" Inscription " was written for the entrance to yonder wood. These
venerable beeches, too, on whose mottled bark the poet carved his
name eighty-five or ninety years ago, still lift their green crowns in
regal glory high into the sweet mountain air.

The people of this region may well cherish their great poet's
memory, for there is not a rustic homestead, a bird of the woods, a
gurgling brook, or a murmuring pine on all these solitary hills that
has not its added dower of beauty from his immortal words. " He
gave these glory and made them dear." Every farmer who mows
the perfumed fields, or hears the summer rain pattering on the
green flags of his corn, finds life better worth living, for the life that

began here one hundred years ago. Much that is most precious
here was Bryant's by right of discovery, but he has left us the keys
to that ideal estate, for our own use and behoof forever. It is an
estate compared with which that willed by Caesar to the citizens of
Rome was a bagatelle. Other poets with their masks of hysteric
joy or gaunt despair, with blaring bugles or sweetly modulated
pipes, came and went, but to us of farm, and home, and shop the
pageant was hollow and touched us not.

Then there came, from just over the summit of a past century, a
Green Mountain youth, without bugle or banner, or misty phrase,
singing in words as simple and sweet as the notes of the hermit
thrush, songs of field and forest arid stream, and lo, all the face of
nature is changed I We cannot explain this. The secret of genius
eludes us. One thing we know, that whereas we were blind, now
we see.

Bryant's serene genius has thrown a charm over this mountain
region, which makes the Westfield and the " Rivulet " sacred in
literature like the Avon and the Doon.

We can well imagine with what pomp and circumstance the
ancient Greeks would have celebrated the centenary of so illus-
trious a citizen. But we know the moderation our poet loved.
This great and hearty, but rustic and unpretentious demonstration
would surely have pleased him. I have no sympathy with the
emotion-hunting spirit that runs back with literal keg and bottle to
bring home water from the Jordan or the Rubicon. We have an
intense interest, however, in all that lies about us here, for here the
poet and his brothers wrought with ax and flail, and the mothers
and sisters made ^olian music on the spinning wheel.

Of Bryant and his " Green River " Halleck said some seventy
years ago : —

" Spring's loveliest flowers for many a day

Have blossomed on his wandering way;

Beings of beauty and decay
They slumber in their autumn tomb ;

But those that grace his own Green River
Charmed by his song from mortal doom,

Bloom on, and will bloom on forever."

20

It is a great satisfaction to us wlio are native to this vicinity, but
who have long dwelt in more prosaic regions, that Bryant's birth
and early experiences were here, for to these scenes that gentle
magician Distance lends many a tender enchantment. You know
his birthplace just over Meeting House hill yonder, with the
graveyard just across the road — the cradle and the grave in literal
juxtaposition. But this farm was soon made the home, and a de-
lightful home it was. Where else on this continent does winter
give such a delightful privacy of storm ? Where is spring so ardent
and gushing when she finally leaps from the lap of winter as here ?
\Vhere is there a June so tender ? And certainly there is no-
where else anything quite equal to that little cluster of bewitching
November days which you call Indian summer when the Indian
sun-god, composing himself for his winter's sleep, fills his great
pipe and divinely smokes away the hours, filling all the autumn
landscape with soft blue haze. It always did seem to me that these
hills should be the home of poetry, and that here the eagle of free-
dom should build and keep his eyrie forever.

While we are proud of the many distinguished honors paid to
our beloved poet, by civic bodies and academic institutions at home
and in foreign lands, so modestly borne by him ; proud of every
year of his long histor}', we to-day, meeting on the hallowed ground
of the old homestead, will recall more fully the early life and its
pleasing suggestions than the latter days of assured honor and
world-wide renown.

In a time like the present, when unrest is deep and widespread
and the ground of social order heaves and cracks under our feet,
it is rest and refreshment to turn to the contemplation of a charac-
ter as serene and imperturbable as old Greylock ; to rehearse
the words and ways of a poet, who, in his boldest flight of imagi-
nation, never loses sight of the solid ground of fact and com-
mon sense.

Great men are apt to have great vices to match their intellectual
power. When Edward Everett pronounced the eulogy of a certain
great statesman, he was much admired for his adriotness in avoiding

27

unpleasant chapters in the statesman's life ; but here we have a life
no chapter and no line of which calls for glossing or omission.

Bryant was a marvel, but no miracle. He was the result of high
and favoring conditions, among which is the fact that he came of
a line sound in physique, strong of brain, and eminent for virtue ;
and that the perspective of his Pilgrim lineage runs back to John
Alden and Priscilla Mullins under the bows of the Mayflower.

Certain of the higher race qualities seem difficult of transmis-
sion ; nevertheless according to Emerson, " by painting and repaint-
ing them upon every individual they are at last adopted by nature
and baked into her porcelain." Strength and integrity characterized
the line. None of its members would answer to Elder John Le-
land's description of a certain Berkshire county saint, of whom he
said that " Godward he was a very good man indeed, but manward
he was a leetle grain twistical." There was nothing even a leetle
grain twistical in this stock. In Bryant's parentage there was a
happy combination of Cavalier and Puritan in temperament. Dr.
Peter Bryant, genial, scholarly, over-generous, poetic, broad-minded ;
Mrs. Bryant, plodding, persistent, energetic, sciupulous as the laws
of light ; what happier race mixture could be desired ? The poet's
grandfather Snell was Abrahamic and severe in faith. He had a
vein of humor in him, but a joke from Squire Snell was like a
comic cherub carved on one of your old-time mica-slate tomb-
stones. To little Cullen the " Squire " who lived in the Doctor's
family was a cave of gloom, while his mother was his reliance, and
his father was sunshine and inspiration.

Dr. Bryant wisely provided appetizing and nourishing pasturage
of books on which his children could browse at will, such as Little
Jack, Sanford and Merton, Evenings at Home, and the like, follow-
ing with histories, the poets and the best periodicals in which, of
course, good Dr. Channing shone a star of the first magnitude.
From these treasures grew the poet's early and life-long interest in
the Greeks and in their struggles for liberty. Yonder stood the
barn in which on rainy days the boys Austin and Cullen, with old hats
for helmets and plumes of tow, fought over again the battles of the

■Greeks and Trojans. The doctor's high and genial qualities drew to
his hospitable fireside the best brains of the region, and from their
Socratic discussions the boy poet absorbed much that no conven-
'tional school could have given him. Here was also the virgin
forest for a playground, where his mind became stored with those
natural images and analogies which he used with such magic effect
in all the after years. These gave to his figures that roundness
and life that distinguished them from the silhouette of the par-
lor poet.

Except for the companionship of a scholarly father, and the
many visitors at the home, Bryant's boyhood passed like that of
other lads in this region, though he must often have felt stirring
within him higher thoughts and sweeter dreams than he could share
with his rustic companions. The meager winter school, the meet-
ing-house solemn and cold, standing cheek by jowl with the tav-
ern jolly and warm, the great stage and the driver's mellow horn,
the postrider bringing the Hampshire Gazette, militia trainings
on Meeting-House green, raisings, huskings, apple bees and sing-
ing schools ; these, as well as hard work, were features of the time,
and best of all, that genuine civic " university extension," the New
England town meeting, that most precious institution, brought from
the Netherlands by the Pilgrim Fathers, — the town meeting, at
which the town, man and boy, gathered en masse, the men to dis-
cuss and vote, and the boys to learn the meaning and methods of
public affairs ; a model school of public business and debate.
The March meeting was the Massachusetts House of Commons,
and the orthodox pulpit was its House of Lords. At the last town
.meeting I ever attended in Cummington, — and it was in the old
Baptist meeting-house, more than forty years ago, a building of
historic interest, sadly swept from the landscape by fire only last
week, — we of the abolition side were defeated by a close vote,
but when that fact was announced, Alden Tower, earnest soul of
■blessed memory, leaped upon a bench and shouted,

" Truth crushed to earth will rise again ;
The eternal years of God are hers."

2ii

We felt instantly reassured and almost triumphant. Oh ! how
often to the reformer harried and buffeted in the long struggle with
ignorance and shame and wrong have those lines been the refresh-
ing shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And such they will
be while the language endures. I often wonder whether we should
ever have had from Bryant a Thanatopsisor a Forest Hymn if our
present mediocrity-making school • system with its constant com-
petitive examinations and its markings and child prizes, had been
in vogue a hundred years ago. I do not believe we should. Far
better was it for the boy Bryant to listen to Socratic discussions
by his father's broad fireside, or to the nooning debates of the
sturdy farmers as they ate their rye and Indian bread and cheese
on the steps of the old yellow meeting-house. These discussions
were largely political, the majority of the people of this region, led
by Dr. Bryant, being zealous Federalists ; as over in Cheshire they
were almost unanimously Jeffersonians under the lead of John
Leland. It was the very time of which \\'endell Phillips used to
tell when Massachusetts mothers frightened their children to sleep'
by saying " Thomas Jefferson.'" But the boy poet had learned to
reason, and so though as a boy he gave his satire free rein on Jeffer-
son and his ■' Embargo,'' in due time he became an honored leader
of the Jeffersonian forces of the land.

One word more about Dr. Peter Bryant. It may perhaps be said
that in this case William Cullen comes up, like the bean in the
adage, bringing his father on his back ; but however that may be,
the doctor seems to have been a rare and noble character, fit to
stand by the side of Thackeray's good Dr. London. His early
death no doubt resulted from his self-sacrificing faithfulness and
exposure in his profession. When he had talked with his fellow
physicians and had found his own view confirmed that his months
were few, he still went about as usual, healing, cheering, soothing,,
and many had cause to bless him. To his family he said no sad
word, but lived among them cheerful and tender, calm and loving,
though he knew the night was at hand when he should see and.
work for them no more.

30

No Greek or Roman matron of heroic days left a more spotless
record of a busy life than the poet's mother. To her example he
attributes his rigid adherence, in riper years, to the great rule of
right without regard to persons. She was in person tall, agile and
strong. At the age of sixty-seven she was still an expert horse-
woman and could vault from the ground into the saddle. This
agility and strength were characteristic of the line. Many of you
know that the poet, even in his later rambles about the place here,
never climbed over the stone fences, but placing his hand on the
top, easily vaulted over. It was the poet's mother who induced her
boys to set the good example of planting out maples and elms by
the roadside. I wish that some man with a heart in his bosom
would select the finest of those trees and on its breast inlay a tablet
with the name of Sallie Snell Bryant upon it; then let every
thoughtful passer-by in the summer time salute its pomp and
plentitude of green, and give it a cheerful hail e\'en when winter
winds howl through its branches.

The poet's mother kept a most remarkable diary. Not such as
most of us keep, which after the first week or two of the new year
is left to perish of neglect, but she kept one for fift)'-three solid
years without the break of a day. Every day has, in her own hand,
a condensed record of weather, household work, and family and
neighborhood events. Nothing was allowed to interfere. Com-
pany, sickness, journeys, births, death itself made no break in this
record. Each year has its quaint little volume, the paper being cut
and bound by her own hands and sewed with linen thread of her
own spinning. The poet's reticence, his steadfastness and his life-
long care never to say the wrong word are foreshadowed in this
diary. The Chinese have a proverb that when the wrong word
escapes a chariot and four cannot overtake it. Neither the poet
nor his mother allowed any such word to escape. This kind, per-
sistent woman — described by King Lemuel long ago — in all the
nearly twenty thousand entries of the diary, makes no complaint,
speaks no unpleasant word of a neighbor, and utters never a sylla-
ble of gush. Where can this be matched ?

31

One entry is of especial interest on this occasion. It is not
underscored, tliere are no exclamation points, yet it marks an era
in literature.

Nov. 3, 1794. Stormy. Wind N. E, Churned. Seven in the
evening a son born.

Two days later the record is :

Nov. 5, 1794. Clear. Wind N. W. Made Austin a coat. Sat
up all day. Went into the kitchen. Mr. Dawes died (grandfather
of ex-Senator Dawes).

From the record for 18 11, the year in which Thanatopsis was
written, we find that Cullen was at Williams College, and returned
in May and the boys go fishing. A calf was killed, but whether in
honor of the student's return is not stated. In December, 181 1, he
goes to Worthington to study law with Mr. Howe, and he goes
wearing the great coat his mother cut and made for him. It also
appears from the diary that she cut and made the brown broad-
cloth suit which the doctor wore in the Massachusetts Senate.
Still on and on the diary goes, till at Princeton, in the winter of
1847 it records her fall, and the breaking of a hip, but there is no
break in the record which tells the weather, the kindness of friends,
the coming and going of fugitive slaves on the Underground Rail-
road ; the last tremulous entry being made by her own hand on
the last day of her life May ist, 1847.
In the lines beginning,

" The May sun sheds an amber light,"

Bryant speaks tenderly of his mother.

" Upon the woodland's moving airs

The small birds' mingled notes are flung,
But she whose voice more sweet than theirs,
Once bade me listen while they sung,
Is in her grave
Low in her grave."

Some part of our poet's education was secured in the family
of Moses Hallock in }'onder hamlet of Plainfield. On the list of
students, who from time to time studied with Mr. Hallock and

32

boarded in his family, on rye and Indian bread and milk (it was
known as the " Bread and Milk College ") at the munificent rate
of a dollar and a quarter a week, I find the names of William
C. Bryant, Jonathan Dawes, Jonas King the missionary, John
Brown of Harper's Ferry and Dr. Royal Joy, whose erect figure and
calomel-loaded saddle bags were long familiar on these hills. A
fresh impulse from some unrecognized source was given to men's
minds in the early years of the present century. There was a
revival of poetry in many lands and a liberation from old forms,
bringing in a simpler style and a closer clinging to the breast of
nature. In our own country New England gave us six giants of
poetry at a birth — Bryant, Emerson, \\'hittier, Longfellow, Lowell,
and Holmes. Across the sea there arose almost simultaneously a
similar group — Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, and
Tennyson. Of the American group all were born in this little
heaven-favored state of Massachusetts, except Longfellow, and he
quickly made the Bay State his home. A poet is not necessarily
an abnormal and improvident being. All the American group
came of sound and well-regulated families and all had charming
households of their own. All were tested by the Ithuriel spear of
the slavery question and all pro\ed stanch and true. All were re-
ligious and sang and lived that elder and eternal religion that is
always true, while theologies and mythologies pass away. \\'e are
therefore not surprised to find them all reaching a good old age, —
Lowell se\enty-two, Longfelloiv seventy-five, Emerson eighty,
Bryant eighty-four, Whittier eighty-six, and one. Dr. Holmes,
wearing as evenly as the " One Hoss Shay," lingers " the last leaf
upon the tree " at eighty-live. There are said to be languages in
which there is no word corresponding to our word home, ^^'ith our
poets that word is the central sun around which language revolves.

Wordsworth first caught the new spirit on the British side of the
sea, as did Bryant on the American.

Bryant and Wordsworth have much in common. Tliere is the
same simplicity and exquisite fitness of language and nearness to
nature ; the same tenderness and the same sense of the equilibriuni

33

of the universe, " no great and no small to the soul that maketh all."
The American sestette was led strangely enough ijy a boy of
seventeen ; led, too, not on some new and captivating theme, but
on a topic as old as the race and as trite as old. Carlyle wanted
to postpone poetry to a future and more fitting age, yet youth and
beauty have found no sweeter expression than in pagan poets, dead
many centuries ago. But from all the long line from Homer down
to the present hour, it was reserved for Bryant, beyond any other,
to complete nature's circuit and make even old age and death
grand and sweet.

Let us recall for a moment Bryant's rare personality. There was
an indefinable something in his whole aspect that at once conveyed
the impression of a nature reverend, robust and grand. He was
erect in figure, always squarely standing on both feet, a mental as
well as a physical characteristic. His head and face, like his first
great poem, seemed to belong to all ages of the world. \\'hat a
capital model it would have furnished for a gigantic sculpture on
the pediment of the Parthenon 1 Some faces carry their date and
all their story in the lines of expression. The whole book is printed
on the cover. Bryant's deeply carved countenance is hieroglyphic
and belonged to antediluvian, postdiluvian, or current time, accord-
ing to your imagination. Keen eyes peering out from the shadow
of overhanging brows, did not hold you like the glittering eye of
the ancient mariner, but they penetrated to your very marrow. He
was always neatly dressed, for he had none of the small " pride
that apes humility." Antisthenes, the cynic, affected a ragged coat ;
but Socrates said to him, " Antisthenes, I can see your vanity peer-
ing out through the holes of your coat." Bryant carefully ob-
served the proprieties of good society. He knew very well what
was due to his own position, but felt no sense of incongruity in the
company of shirt-sleeved laborers, nor would he, like Scott's Sir
Piercie Shaftoe, blush to lead the farmer's daughter out to dinner
or the dance. He was reticent ; even with old acquaintances he did
not conceal altogether his distaste for those pretty conventional
fibs and nothings that come of " making '' talk. He loved to have

34

with him on a long stroll an original-minded and suggestive friend,
who could enjoy the companionship of silence, and take a great
deal for granted. Webster had a talent for sleep. Bryant had a
talent for solitude and silence. He must have often felt like say-
ing as did little Paul Dombey at the seaside, to the sympathetic,
chattering children around him, " Go away, if you please ; thank
you, thank you, but I don't want you.''

The lover is never lonely with his mistress. Bryant being pro-
foundly in love with nature, was no more lonely with wind and
cloud in these wide pastures and deep woods, than amid the stacks
of stone and brick, and the everlasting din of wheels and hustling
crowds of Fulton street and Broadway. Even there his inner ear
still heard the rustle of the birches and the soft purr of "Roaring
Brook " falling into its cool, rocky basins.

Bryant's power of acquiring Icnowledge was so prodigious and
his industry so unremitting that in effect he lived two or three cen-
turies. Hi.'^ wonderful memory was not like that of Robert Hon-
din, the prestidigitateur, a dragnet raking in everything good, bad
and indifferent. Only that which had merit of some kind was re-
tained. He would wear no title. What title could add anything
to that of Mr. Bryant or Mr. Gladstone, each the chief citizen of
his own country ? The popular notion that he was of cold, im-
passive temperament was not without excuse, though the truth is
that he had, on the contrary, rather a torrid temper. His whole
life having been a struggle to o\'ercome imperfections of every
kind, he came at last to hold an air-brake control of himself, and
became one of the gentlest oi men.

One, however, who should at any time presume to impugn his
personal integrity, or to kill the wild birds on his premises, would
become aware of heat under the cool exterior.

Bryant secured nothing of what is called " passional training" —
Lord save the mark ! — by the sacrifice of women's hearts, as did
Goetlie and Byron and Burns. The windows of his soul were open
to veracity, courage and virtue, and these angels brought him the
gift of tongues and of song. Every public meeting at Athens at

35

a certain period of its history, was opened with a curse on any one
who should not speak what he really thought. Bryant was one of
the few for whom such a curse would have had no terrors. He was
first of all truthful, the very antipode of the demagogue. Like the
planets in their courses, Bryant was never idle, never behind time,
and never in a hurry. Though ravished by the order and beauty
of the universe, the Snell in his nature would never allow him to
burst into a volcanic frenzy like poor Keats. Though he made
many voyages to Europe and elsewhere, the record of which makes
charming chapters in his biography, he remained the most Ameri-
can of our poets. He belongs to the soil and skies of his native
land as distinctly as the bison and the bald eagle.

He was an optimist with the serene assurance of great and ear-
nest souls, that the universe is sound and God is well. His faith
was like the eternal sunset in Faust, where every height is on fire,
and every vale is in repose. Browning vociferates the same senti-
ment and with such passionate vehemence as almost to make us
doubt the writer's confidence in his own shouting. He cries,

" Iterate, reiterate, snatch it from the hells,
Circulate and meditate that God is well,
Pay the ringers to ring it ; put it in the mouths of the bells,
Get the singers to sing it, that God is well."

In calmer and loftier strains, liryant leads us on to serener
heights where the same glorious assurance opens upon us,

" With warmth and certainty and boundless light."
Bryant's poetry is like the playing of actors, like Booth and Joe
Jefferson, artists who never descend to sentimentality or sensa-
tionalism in order to please those who are to see the play but once.
A commoner poet might at first produce a stronger effect.

But gradually absolute fidelity to nature " attunes our taste to a
faultless execution." So in the poetry of Bryant there may at first
appear a lack of fire, but, like everything truly beautiful, it is a con-
tinual revelation and we come at last to listen to him as to nature
herself, and to resent the slightest alteration in the text even by
the author himself.

36

Thanalopsis must be counted the most remarkable of short
poems. The extreme youth of the author, and the fact that the
existence of the poem was a secret shared with no human being,
for five years at least give it a mystery and marvel which add to its
grandeur. It is the vastest figure of Death ever drawn. As it was
written here when the family was intact, it has special interest on
this occasion. To Bryant the subject, though old as Arcturus and
Orion, is new and untried. He tells us what we knew full well be-
fore, but tells it with such power and fitness, that he seems to be
the original discoverer, and to have rescued the fact from chaos.

We can well imagine Milton saying to Bryant, as he said to
another, " After so glorious a performance you ought to do nothing
that is mean and little, not so much as to think of anything but
what is great and sublime." If any such injunction was heard by
our author, grandly did he heed it.

\^'he^ as a boy of eight or ten years of age, I sat on the " little
seats " in the old red schoolhouse over yonder hill, the bigger boys
and girls sometimes had Thanatopsis for a reading lesson, even
then a \ague wonder arose in my mind why it was that to hear
the minister talk of death made my flesh creep and my heart sink,
while to hear Th.nnatopsis, though the theme was the very same,
was soothing and exalting. Doubtless this was in part due to the
large way in which the subject is reviewed in the poem, the mag-
nificent vastness and universality of death, taking away the feeling
of loneliness and glooin ; it was even a little flattering — "Thou
shalt lie down with patriarchs of the infant world, with kings," and
so on. And perhaps it was also the deep sea roll of its rhythm
and the exquisite fitness of language which e\'en a child could feel,
and whose beauty not even the shambling clumsiness of rustic
readers could altogether mar or hide. There is nothing in it pitiful
or distressing as in Addison's " Vision of Mirza " with its terrible
bridge in the \'alley of Bagdad, but all was grand, orderly and serene.

Sitting in the northeast section of the wide gallery in the " Old
Meet'n House " on Meet'n House Hill, might have been seen, in
the summer of 1811, a handsome youth, who seemed to be listen-

37

ing decorously to the long homilies poured forth by good Parson
Briggs, from the high pulpit, in which the preacher seemed to be
going to sea in a bowl. (Parson Briggs, by the way, was ordained in
this very grove one hundred and sixteen years ago.) But really the
thoughts of the youth in the wide gallery were wandering in God's
first temples, and he was listening to

" Airs from viewless Eden blown,"

for " Thanatopsis " was then taking form in his mind. How little
the grave and stately minister dreamed that when eighty years
should have rolled away the soliloquy of the handsome youth would
be known and admired in all civilized lands and languages, while
his own faithful and sonorous messages of fifty-two consecutive
years would have passed with the tall pulpit and sounding board from
which they were promulgated to a deep and common forgetfulness !
"Thanatopsis"' is the soliloquy of youth, yet forgotten nations,
extinguished constellations and the living present seem to be rever-
ently listening and adding their solemn amen. It was not written
for fame nor to propagate a theoiy. Beecher in a discourse de-
livered soon after the poet's death, pronounced "Thanatopsis"' a
pagan poem. Well, it is the poem of the human race and that in-
cludes the pagan. It is pagan, as the air and the Pleiades and the
Zodiac are pagan. We all instantly agree that what is said is the
exact truth, but if there were a theory, the more exact the statement
of it the more certain we should be of disagreement. It was no
more affected by authorities or financial considerations than the
" flight of years " itself. It is Nature's own voice, spoken through
the clear brain of an ingenuous youth. The poem is unique in
what it says and in what it does not say. Though the author lived
in the midst of fierce and continual theological pronouncement,
there is not in the poem the slightest allusion to any system of
faith, to a deity or even to a future state of existence. There is
no side issue, no tub to any whale of public opinion, but death is
quietly and surely restored to its proper place in the universal order.
It is the one great poem to which a date is an impertinence. It fits

38

as perfectly for ten thousand years ago or ten thousand years hence
as for to-day.

Our chairman (Mr, Parke Godwin) has happily said somewhere
that " Poetry is the steeping of the palpable and familiar in the
glorious dyes of the ideal." Coleridge defines it as "The best
words in the best order.'

Bryant fully answers both requirements.

Bryant's exquisite choice of words, both in sound and signification,
is a continual delight. We hear the " hissing bolt of scorn " and

" The .sound of dropping nuts is heard,
Though all the trees are still,"

not falling nuts, but dropping.

In " Waiting by the Gate," how ponderous the tread in one line
and how light in the succeeding : —

" .Steps of earth's great and mighty between those pillars gray,
And prints of little feet mark the dust along the way."

When he speaks of the " still lapse of ages " the words hold
you ; you can hardly misread them if you would. And mark how
smoothly " the long train of ages glides away '" in an infinite
perspective !

It is this clearness and musical fitness- that make Bryant's lines
so easy to read. Even his hymns protect themselves, though of all
bad reading, hymn reading is usually the worst. Many a hymn
writer might well make the dying request of the old militia captain.
" Don't let the awkward squad fire over my grave,"

Bryant gives us pictures rather than description. He does not

weary with details like the old poets, nor with catalogues like Walt

Whitman. He is almost microscopic in accuracy, but there is no

dissection. He sees the veins and cilia and serratures of the leaf,

but he does not anatomize it. His stvle is so simple and clear as

to seem ine\ itable.

" Heaped in the hollows of the gruA-e
The autumn leaves lie dead ;
They rustle to the eddying gusl
And to the rabbit's tread."

39

How obvious ! How easy ! How else could it have been writ-
ten ? It is the artlessness of perfect art. His words are the com-
mon ones of the common people, yet with what grace and dignity
they move in the presence of Johnsonian royalty. There is never
a crutch or a clubfoot in the whole procession.

Bryant's personification of wind and stream and mountain we
accept instantly and as a matter of course. Probably there is
some contemplative boy here to-day who makes a confidant and
playfellow of old Westfield river. I know there was one such,
something more than sixty years ago, to whom the delightful little
river was as distinct a personality as " Deacon Briggs," or the
gigantic colored brother, " Old Brister.'" That boy would have
blushed scarlet to have it known that he actually asked the whole
stream how he could go laughing over his cobblestones rapids,
when he had to traverse at night the deep gloom of Dug-Way and
Deep-Hole where a man had been drowned. But long afterward,
when he saw by chance in a magazine Bryant's " Night Journey of
a River, " he felt justified and almost glorified, for the great poet,
too, talked to the stream : —

" O River ! darkling river ! what a voice
Is that thou uttercst while all is still —
The ancient voice, that, centuries ago,
Sounded between thy hills, while Rome was yet,
A weedy solitude by Tiber's stream."

Late one afternoon in December, 1815, Bryant walked over to
yonder hamlet of Plainfield, with the design of opening a law office
there. That was the walk that led to the writing of what many
hold is his best poem, "To a Waterfowl." As he climbed the hill
into the little town he turned around, as one so naturally does in
climbing a long hill, and looked back over the darkening landscape,
feeling quite forlorn and desolate over his business prospects. Mr.
Godwin, in his magnificent biography of the poet, in describing the
incident, says : " The sun had already set, leaving behind it one of
those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the
New England skies ; and while he was looking upon the rosy splen-

•1(1

dor, with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made wing along the illumi-
nated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was lost in
the distance, asking himself whence it had come and to what far
home it was flying. When he went to the house where he was to
stop for the night, his mind was still full of what he had seen and
felt and he wrote those lines, as imperishable as our language, ' To
a Waterfowl.' " You all know the closing stanza : —

" He who from zone to zone

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright."

What is the secret of power in lines like this little quatrain .'
When the great violinist Wieniawski pla)'ed in the largest hall
in America it was observed that the slenderest spider thread of
tone from his violin was heard distinctly in every part of the great
room, distance seeming to have little effect upon it. It wa.s the
quality, the purity of tone that gave it such a reach. It is quality,
fidelity to truth and nature that will make Bryant's lines live while
elaborate faiths dissolve and empires pass away, ^^'ho shall say
how many steep declivities in life this little quatrain has helped to
climb, or how often at the parting of the wavs, or in hours of doubt
and distress it has come, bringing comfort and couraL;e with its
sublime trust ? Victor Hugo was right when he said, " Every bird
that flies carries the thread of the infinite in his claw." When
this poem was written our hymn books were dark with hymns that
Giant Despair himself might have written. Bryant has not a line
of despair. Not one ! His Cmd may niit be as Socrates said his
was, " a God of glee," but he is a God of serene and eternal joy.
The loneliness of Plainfield was soon exchanged for the excellent
society and wider opportunities of Great Barrington \vhere he laid
the foundation of a happy home by his happy marriage, and where
he proved his ability to succeed in the profession of the law ; but
through his own aspirations, and the suggestions of the apprecia-
tive and learned Sedgwicks and others, he entered a more congenial
field in the metropolis. His fame was already secure. Great men

41

live two lives, one in their own generation and another in the ages
following.

Immensely long was Bryant's life as literatus and poet, and the
second life will stretch away to a proportionate duration. Bryant
lived two lives in his own day and generation and was pre-eminent
in each— poet and editor.

Bryant's fame rests mainly on his verses, but his chief merit is
that he was a great and constant moral force. The angels of Con-
duct, Toil and Thought ever stood by his door, ready to accom-
pany him whithersoever he went. In the earlier part of his editorial
career the moral apathy of the country was profound and almost
hopeless. Of the great powers of society, state, church, court and
commerce, it would be hard to say which was the most deaf to the
voice of conscience, or the most willingly blind to the demands of
human brotherhood. Bryant did not go into a newspaper for the
express purpose of reviving this paralyzed conscience of the people,
but primarily to get a livelihood. But his hand being to the plow,
his sense of justice would not permit him to look back. In the
midst of the free and easy dickering with conscience in national
affairs he stood as firm as his native hills for the sacredness of
man's duty to man. He made the Evening Post not only a literary
authority, but the high-water mark of public and political morality.
For two generations he labored, a man among men, for the
strengthening of that moral sentiment and that public and private
virtue which lie at the basis of all politics and all religion that are
worth anything to mankind. The influences of half a century of
such labor must be vast and far-reaching, though intangible and un-
traceable as that of the sunlight, whose results are seen in ruddy
fruits and grateful leafage on every hand.

"\^'ise men," said a Greek philosopher, " argue questions and fools
decide them." But in that same Athens, though the mob was as
capricious as a Chicago mob of to-day, the greatest happiness of
that age was attained, and its philosophy and art still illuminate all
the new highways of civilization. So men like Bryant and Emer-
son and Whittier, knowing wherein their power lay, were right in

4'^

going steadily on with that John the Baptist work which prepared
the way for " the glory of the coming of the Lord." I cannot for-
bear to recall the shout of joy with which young Buffalo platform
Free-Soilers in 1848 saw Bryant unfurl, in the staid and able Even-
ing Post, the banner of Free Soil, Free Speech and Free J\Ien ; to
which he added Free Trade on his o\\ n account. In the center
and heart of Baal worship he stood for that " Higher Law " whose
home, as old Richard Hooker said, " is in the bosom of God, and
whose voice is the harmony of the universe." And when, in 1865,
it at last became almost safe for colleges to listen to conscience,
for statesmen to be wise, for commerce to be honest, for the church
to be Christian, and for the courts to be just, none rejoiced with a
profounder joy than this modest, self-possessed poet-editor, foi:
none had played a nobler part in the mighty struggle.

" Blest and thrice blest the Roman
Who sees Rome's brightest day,"

and this our Cato saw.

Part of the oath required of every Egyptian soul, in the judgment
hall of Osiris, before admission to Heaven, was one that could
have been taken by Bryant every morning of his career : " I have
never defiled my conscience from fear or favor to my superiors."
Few lives have been so well rounded and complete. No window
in this Aladdin palace was left unfinished, but a magic lamp of
genius long shone clear from every one. His first word was the
absolute truth of nature, and his last was for human freedom. All
the shores of Time are piled high with the debris of faiths, and cus-
toms, and empires ; the very next L;ale that goes careering over
mankind may add our own to the vast and melancholy accumula-
tion ; but what storm, what revolution can bring disaster to a
character so gloriously in line with eternal rectitude ? " It is in no
more danger than a star in the jaws of a cloud." Since such a
man has lived and wrought, civic virtue and honesty in politics are
no longer an impracticable dream. With a fuller measure of success
in life than his great Iieart could have dreamed, he passed a\va\',
breathing the grateful fragrance of universal honor and esteem.

Beautiful was this life of eighty-four years in the home, in the
political forum, and in the wide fields of literature.

Beautiful was this life in these lonely pastures and silent woods ;
more beautiful when, la)ing his harp aside, he went down into the
thickest of the struggle for conscience and duty and human rights.

Beautiful upon these mountains was the coming of our beloved
poet, chanting the primal, eldest message of Nature and of Time-

Beautiful was his going, at last, witli the eloquent eulogium of a
fellow worker in the cause of human freedom upon his aged lips.

Oh, serene and illustrious spirif ! Brood forever over these thy
native hills, and over all our land, the guardian genius of litera-
ture and liberty, of poetry and art, and all that is noble and pure
and true.

The Memorial address was followed by the singiuL; of Bryant's
hymn, commencing " O, deem not the)- are blest alone," arranged
as a duet, by Julie A. Shaw and Henrietta .S. Nahmer, after which
Mr. John H. Bryant recited in clear, \-ibrant tones " The Monody,"
a part of which poem he had written soon after his brother's death.
The touching pathos of this tribute, given to the dead brother, by
the one who still lived, will never be forgotten by those who heard it-

A MONODY.

My heart to-day is far away ;

I seem to tread my native iiills ;
I see the flocks and mossy rocks ;

I hear tlie gush of mountain rills.

There with me walks and kindly talks
The dear, dear friend of all my years,

We laid him low not long ago,
At Roslyn-side with sobs and tears.

"But though I know that this is so

I will not have it so to-day;
The illusion still, by force of will

Shall give ray wayward fancy play.

\^'ith joy we roam around the home
Where in our childhood days we played ;

We tread the mead, with verdure spread,
And seek the wood-paths' grateful shade.

AVe climb the steep, where fresh winds sweep,
Where oft before our feet have trod,

And look far forth, e.i-t, south, and north
" Upon the glorious works of God."

We tread again the rocky glen,

Where foaming waters dash along;

And sit alone on mossy stone

Charmed by the thrasher's twilight song.

Anon we stray, far, far away

The club-moss crumbling 'neath our tread.
Seeking the spot, by most forgot,

Wliere sleep the generations dead.

And now we come into the home.
The dear old home our childhood knew.

And round the board with plenty stored
W^e gather as we used to do.

With reverence now, I see him bow
That head with many homirs crowned ;

All white his locks are as the flocks
That feed upon the hills around.

John Howard Bryant.

Again we meet in converse sweet
Around the blazing cottage hearth,

And while away the closing day
With quiet talk and tales of mirth.

The spell is broke. Oh, cruel stroke !

The illusive vision will not stay,
My fond, sweet dream was fancy's gleam

Which stubborn fact has chased away.

I am alone ; my friend is gone.
He'll seek no more that lovely scene;

His feet no more shall wander o'er
These wooded hills and pastures green.

No more he'll look upon the brook

Whose banks his infant feet had pressed,

The little rill, whose waters still
Come dancing from the rosy west.

Nor will he climb at autumn time
Those hills the glorious sight to \-iew,

When in their best the woods are dressed—
The same his raptured boyhood knew.

The hermit thrush at twilight hush
He'll hear no more with deep delight ;

No blossoms gay be.side the way
.\ttract his quick and eager sight.

The lulling sound from pines around
No more shall soothe his noon-day rest.

Nor trailing cloud with misty shroud
For him the morning hills invest.

That voice so sweet that late did greet
My ear each passing summer-tide

Is silent now ; that reverend brow
Rests in the grave at Roslyn-side.

His was a life of toil and strife
Against the wrong and for the good ;

Through weary years of hopes and fears-
For freedom, truth and right he stood.

At length a gleam of broad esteem
On his declining years was cast.

And a bright crown of high renown
Enwreathed his hoary head at last.

4<!

His love of song so deep and strong

In boyhiiod, faded not in age;
At life's last hour, with noontide power,

His genius lit the printed page.

His sun has set; its twilight yet

Flushes the chambers of the sky;
A softer flame of spreading fainr,

A glory that shall never die.

'file closing exercise of the morning was the singing by E. Lester
Brown, son of the orator of the day, of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's
grand lyric, " The Battle Hymn of the Republic, ' the refrain of
■ Glory Hallelujah" being taken by the chorus. When the gifted
authoress rose at the spontaneous greeting from the audience, the
scene was thrilling and inspiring, as with grace she bowed her
whitened head to the cheers of this appreciative country-side
I'atherin".

AFTERNOON EXERCISES.

These commenced with a march, " Old Homestead," by the
orchestra, and the singing of " A Forest Retreat " by the local
chorus, after which the following letters were read by the sec-
retary : —

Letter FRONr O. W. Holmes.

Beverly Farms, Mass., August 13, 1894.
It would have given me great pleasure to attend the celebration
of Bryant's hundredth birthday at Cummington, but the effects of a
recent illness render it imprudent forme to undertake the journey.
Thirty years ago I had the privilege of being present at a great
meeting held in New York, to greet Mr. Bryant on his seventieth
birthday. He was the oldest of that group of poets whose names
were already familiar to all American readers. If such an office
had existed he would have been the Dean of the Guild of our
native poets. Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier and Lowell were all-
then living and in full possession of their varied powers. As I re-
call him on that occasion he seemed as one belonging to the past.
His venerable aspect was growing more and more like the ideal of
the bard as Gray has pictured him. I need not quote the lines
which recur to all who remember Bryant in his later years. Yet
though his life was handed over to us from a bygone centur}-,
though he looked to the younger crowd around him as if he had
strayed from another world into that of to-day, no man was more
keenly alive to the thoughts and doings of his time than \Villiam
Cullen Bryant. I could have wished to contribute on this occasion
to the memory of the poet in the form of verse, but I must be per-
mitted to borrow the words of one of tne *guests at the banquet
in New York which express what I would say better than any I
should be likely to extort from the languors of convalescence.

"Himself.

48

How shall we praise the verse whose music flows
\\'ith solemn cadence and majestic close,
Pure as the dew that filters through the rose ?

How shall we thank him that in evil days
He faltered never, nor for blame nor praise,
Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays ?

But as his boyhood was of manliest hue
So to his youth his manly years were true.
All dyed in royal purple, through and through.

At the meeting of his seventieth birthday Bryant was in a vigor-
ous condition of mind and body. He might, perhaps, have lived
into his ninth or tentli decade had lie not been in dangerously good
health. But trusting to his strong constitution he would not spare
himself. He forgot the limitations of threescore and twenty, and
Nature reminded him of them in a fatal message.

As a patriot his name belongs with those of the " Sons of
Liberty '' of the century in which he was born. As a man of letters
he deserves an honorable place among those of the scholars of his
time. As a poet he has shaped his own monument.

Marbles forget their message to mankind,
In his own verse the poet lives enshrined.

A breath of noble verse outlives all that can be carved in stone
or cast in bronze. In his poems inspired by Nature, Bryant has-
identified himself with perennial life. In singing of Death lie has
won the prize of Immortality.

O. ^V. HoLJiES.

Letter from ex-Senator Da'wes.

PiTTSFIELD, August I O, 1S94.

I sincerely regret that I have not been able to so arrange pre-
vious engagements as to make it possible for me to participate in
the commemorative exercises of the sixteenth in my native town.
I am very glad that this generation of its inhabitants cherish the
memory and honor the name of its most illustrious son. The town
does itself great honor in bearing testimony to the personal worth
and the genius of the most distinguished of its children. It thus

49

testifies to the world its own appreciation of those rare gifts with
which Mr. Bryant was endowed and casts out from its borders the
pretense that a propliet is without lionor in his own country.

It is the birthright of us all to love and honor him who has done
so much to keep the name of our good old town a living memory
as long as the rivulet shall run to the river and the hills among
■which he was born shall stand about his birthplace.

May the occasion be most enjoyable to you and all those who
with you pay fitting tribute to the rare and lovable character we
have all held in such high regard.

Henry L. Dawes.

There was one person seated upon the platform by the side of
the poet's daughter, who had been the friend of Bryant for many
years, and also his associate upon the Evening Pest, with which his
name is inseparably connected, who had the further claim to dis-
tinction of having represented our country at the court of France
under Abraham Lincoln — the Hon. John Bi^'elow. He had come
from the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York, then
in session at Albany, and this circumstance led to the humorous
suggestions of many of the speakers.

ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN BIGELOW.

When I accepted the invitation to assist at this pious festival it
was with the understanding, as I thought, that I was to be ministered
unto, not to minister; to hear rather than be heard; nor was it
without some scruples that I left Albany yesterday, as I was com-
pelled to do in order to get here this morning, for the final vote in
the Constitutional Convention of my state, on the amendment in-
tended to extend the elective franchise to the gentler sex, was to
be taken last evening, and it giievcd me to lose the only oppor-
tunity I have ever had or expect to have of casting my vote for
such extension. However, I overcame my scruples by pairing with
an adversary of suffrage extension, that I might not seem to neg-
lect any and especially such an appropriate occasion for doir.g
homage to the memory of him in whose honor we are gathered
together here to-day.

The mind-reading speakers who have already addressed you
have anticipated much of what I would have wished to say, for-
tunately for )ou as they have said it better than I should hixe
done, and I shall therefore limit the few remarks with which I shall
detain you to matters more or less exclusively within the range of
my personal experience.

It was my good fortune to be associated professionally with Air.
Bryant for several years, and to come into closer relations with his
opulent intellect and symmetrical character than could have been
enjoyed by many of those whom I have the privilege of address-
ing. I have always regarded his invitation to join him in the
management of the Evening Post, and to share with him its re-
sponsibilities, as the greatest honor I have ever received. It gave
me a value in my own eyes which of itself constituted a perpetual
impulse to justify it.

The purity of his life, the lofty standard which he followed, his
inexorable truthfulness, directness and uprightness which have

51

been necessarily the most prominent thieme of all the discourses
you have heard to-day ; his varied literary accomplishments un-
equaled in this country at least, by any who have ornamented the
profession, to which he devoted the most of his adult life, and
finally his verse, the full value of which is far yet from being duly
appreciated, exerted upon me a peculiar influence, more extensive
and enduring than I have been conscious of experiencing from
my associations with any other man in my life.

Everything he did, said or wrote was in some way an example,
an impulse, or a criticism. It always bore a certain stamp of
superiority which arrested attention and commanded respect.
What is still'a surprise to me and to many may seem incredible, I
felt that influence for long years after we were separated to such a
degree that I rarely found myself perplexed in regard to the line of
duty or propriety or good taste, without askingmyself, "Whatwould
Bryant have done under those circumstances ?" and I may say that,
unlike the ancient oracles, he never gave me an equivocal or doubt-
ful answer. If I never profited as much as I ought and should
have done by such an example, it is, nevertheless, an illustration of
the power and importance of a good example, which has seemed
worthy of being referred to here, for it is calculated to give us all a
juster sense of our responsibilities for the example we give one to
another, responsibilities which we all undervalue.

There was another web woven into the woof of Mr. Bryant's life
to which no allusion has yet been made here to-day, which must be
carefully reckoned with in any estimate of his life and character.
Mrs. Bryant, embalmed in his early verse as " Fairest of the Rural
Maids," was his Egeria. She was his confidant, counselor and
partner, in all his hopes and anxieties, in prosperity and adversity.
He never considered his verses fit to meet the public eye until they
had received her approval, for he early discovered that he had no
other friend whose judgment of his verse was so sure to be ratified
by the public. What MS»»eeii-as was to Horace, she less question-
ably was to Mr. Bryant, the half of his life. Nothing he ever
wrote is more touching than the lines written during her illness at

52

Naples in i860, when he was despairing of her recovery, and
brooding over the dread prospect of their earthly separation.
These verses in his published writings are accompanied by no ex-
planation of the pathetic circumstances under which they were
written and which may not have been known to many of you. I
think I cannot more appropriately conclude these unpremeditated
remarks than by reading those lines with which, while commemorat-
ing Bryant, we may also in his majestic verse commemorate the
beloved wife of the poet and the mother of his children.
Mr. Bigelow then read from Bryant's Poems

The Cloud on the Way.

See, before us, in our journey, broods a mist upon the ground ;
Thither leads the path we walk in, blending with that gloomy bound ;
Never eye haih pierced its shadows to the mystery they screen ;
Those who once have passed within it never more on earth are seen.
Now it seems to stur'p beside us, now at seeming distance lowers.
Leaving banks that tempt us onward bright with summer-green and flowers,
Yet it blots the way forever ; there our journey ends at last ;
Into that dark cloud we enter, and are gathered to the past.
Thou who, in this flinty pathway, leading through a stranger-land.
Passes! down the rocky valley, walking with me hand in hand,
Which of us shall be the soonest folded to that dim unknown.'
Which shall leave the other walking in this flinty path alone?
Even now I see thee shudder, and thy cheek is white with fear.
And thou clingest to my side as comes that darkness sweeping near.
" Here " thou say'st " the path is rugged, sown with thorns that wound the feet ;
But the sheltered glens are lovely, and the rivulet's song is sweet ;
Roses breathe from tangled thickets ; lihes bend from ledges brown ;
Pleasantly between the pelting showers the sunshine gushes down ;
Dear are those who walk beside us, they whose looks and voices make
All this rugged region cheerful, till I love it for their sake.
Far be yet the hour that takes me where that chilly shadow lies.
From the things I know and love, and from the sight of loving eyes."
So thou murmurest, fearful one ; but see, we tread a rougher way ;
Fainter glow the gleams of sunshine that upon the dark rocks play;
Rude vfinds strew the faded flowers upon the crags o'er which we pass ;
Banks of verdure, when we reach them, hiss with tufts of withered grass,
One by one we miss the voices which we loved so well to hear.
One by one the knidly faces in that shadow disappear.
Yet upon the mist before us fix thine eyes with closer view ;

53

See, beneath its sullen skirts the rosy morning glimmers through ;

One whose feet the thorns have wounded passed that barrier and came back

With a glory on His footsteps lighting yet the dreary track.

Boldly enter where He entered ; all that seems but darkness here,

When thou once hast passed beyond it, haply shall be crystal-clear;

Viewed from that serener realm, the walks of human life may lie,

Like the page of some familiar volume, open to thine eye ;

Haply, from the o'erhanging shadow, thou may'st stretch an unseen hand,

To support the wavering steps that print with blood the rugged land.

Haply, leaning o'er the pilgrim, all unweeting thou art near.

Thou may'st whisper words of warning or of comfort in his ear,

Till, beyond the border where that brooding mystery bars the sight.

Those whom thou hast fondly cherished stand with thee in peace and light.

Mr. Godwin introduced Mrs. Howe as " one of the leading
women in the great movement favoring woman suffrage," a position
which she considers of equal honor with her rank as authoress of
the " Battle Hymn."

POEM BY MRS. HOWE.

The age its latest decade shows,
The wondrous autumn near its dose,
Revealing in its fateful span,
Unwonted ways of good to man.

Imprisoned vapor speeds its course,
Flies, quick with life th' electric force,
Nature's daemonic mysteries
Are angels now that win and please.

But dearer far to human ken.

The record of illustrious men,

The gifts conveyed in measures wrought

Of noble purpose and high thought.

Above the wild industrial din.
The race an hundred goals to win,
The gathered wealth, the rifled mine,
Still sounds the poet's song divine.

The skill that marshals myriad hands.
For manhood's task in many lands,
Attunes her anvil by the lyre,
And forges with Promethean fire.

Oh master of imperial lays.
Crowned in the fullness of thy days,
One heart that owns thy gracious spell
Thy reverend mien remembers well.

*"For mme it was, ere fell the snow
Upon this head of long ago,
My modest wreath to intertwine
With richer offerings at thy shrine.

*At the festival given by the Century Club in commemoration of the seventieth birth-
day of Bryant.

55

A guest upon that day of days,
How leapt my heart to hymn thy praise !
Yea, from that hour my spirit wore
A high content unknown before.

The past engulfs these echoes fond ;
Thou and thy mates have passed beyond.
And that fair festival appears
Dim through the vista of long years.

But love still keeps his watch below.
When fades from sight the sunset glow.
And at the challenge of thy name
Stirs in each heart the loyal flame.

Still battling on the field of life,
We break from the unequal strife,
From task or pastime hasten all
As at a vanished leader's call.

Within the shadow of thy tent
We read again thy testament,
Review the treasure which thy art
Bequeathed t' enrich thy country's heart.

No gift whose precious bloom can fade.

No holocaust on false shrine laid,

A legacy of good untold,

August as oracles of old.

The winged words that cannot die.

The world-transcending prophecy.

Plainfield, not only the sister of Cummington, but its daughter as
well, was honored in the person of the next speaker, Charles
Dudley Warner, the humorous essayist and careful portrayer of
modern social life.

ADDRESS OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

This seems to be a very grand and promiscuous picnic. When
I came to the edge of it, I pushed through to find tlie storm center,
and when I saw the leonine head of Mr. Godwin, I knew the center
of the intellectual radiance. But in this center it is not easy to
address the encircling audience. The only thing that could ade-
quately address this surrounding crowd is a levolving flash-light.

This is a significant and important meeting. It is a great thing
for a town like this to keep in mind the memory of its great men,
and to get together on one pretext or another as often as possible
for the encouragement of its just town pride and the interchange of
social feeling. I like to see the town spirit cultivated, and there is
nothing else so stimulating for it as the inspiring memory of its
great men. To the towns about here, I recommend that they go
back and get as soon as possible a Bryant to celebrate. As I was
born in the next town, Plainfield, and Dr. Bryant, the poet's father
was my father's physician ( 'though I am happy to say not his last),
and our apple orchard is in sight of the Bryant homestead, I feel
that I have some right to pay a tribute to the man whose birth has
conferred distinction on all this region. If Cummington had never
done an\ thing else than produce William CuUen Bryant, she would
be immortal. We see here what is most valuable in the life of any
town, state or nation. History does not much regard fertile soil,
or material wealth, but the admirable men and women that the
state produces. They are the glory of a state. But it is not
merely a matter of reputation. The influence of such a man as
Br\ ant, of such a high character, and such a true poet, is great
with his contemporaries, and with their descendants. Who can
sa\' what moral influence, what a refining and elevating force the
pf^etry of Bryant has been in this region alone ?

I knew " Thanatopsis " by heart when I was a very small boy, and

as I went about repeating it, it used to interpret for me Bryant's
feeling for nature, the nature that I saw, and the noble pathos of
life. It seemed to be a secret which I shared with the poet. I
remember well how shamefaced I was once when a cousin of mine
exposed me. Unbeknown to me he had stood near me one even-
ing, when I was milking one of the cows, and heard me repeat
" Thanatopsis." It must be sufficiently ludicrous, the spectacle of a
barefooted scrap of a boy — a boy, but not more than nine years
younger than the other boy when he wrote the poem — seated on a
milking stool and declaiming those immortal lines to the cow. I
do not know how he managed to accommodate the stately
rhythm of that blank verse to the intermittent sounding streams in
the pail. Verv likely he did not, and that was r ne of the reasons
why he was accused of drying up the cows he milked. I wondered
then, and I wonder now, where " Thanatopsis '' came from. How
did it come into the mind of a boy in these remote hills, away
from the suggestions of the great world ? U.d the hills teach him,
and the forests and the brooks and the clouds ? Was it industry
and application that ma'!e this poem? I think, my friends, that
we shall have to fall back on that mysterious something, the pos-
siblv supernatural suzgeation that we call genius. Ah, it was
genius that has brought this great multitude here to-da\. You
might have had all the dictionary writers and learned men, and
some of the plodding fellows who speak to you, and you would
never have had such a gathering as this.

Now I am going to suggest that we mark this day, by giving this
hill upon which we meet, which runs vonder to a summit, that was
a favorite place of contemplation with our poet, a name that shall
express something of the permanent reputation he has left. Mr.
Bigelow has made himself very popular with this audience by say-
ing that if he had remained at his post in the Constitutional Con-
vention of New York, to-night he might have voted for woman
suffrage. That is, if he had been there he would have voted to
give you suffrage at some time in the future.

I am not going to show my hand by saying whether he is

deservedly popular with you for this, but I am going to give you
a chance to vote right now, without being registered. To vote on
this resolution. Bcsohrd, That it is the sense of the town of Cum-
mington, and of this county, that the hill on which we stand shall
hereafter be known to the world and the map-makers as "Mount
Bryant." The vote seems to be unanimous. Those opposed are
probably not in favor of woman suffrage and I won't take their voie.

One of the most interesting features of the day was the presence
of John W. Hutchinson, sole survivor of the once famous Hutch-
inson band of singers. With his long white locks brushed straight
back from his brow, his long beard, and keen, piercing eyes, and
attire of a bygone fashion, his was a marked presence. With kin-
dling fervor, he ga\'e a few reminiscences of the days when a little
band of Abolitionists made the old Baptist church in Cummington
the headquarters of a movement, which, though feeble then, soon
became of significant importance. He recalled the presence at
this country outpost, of those honored leaders in the cause — Wen-
dell Philips, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone, Stephen Foster,
Parker Pillsbury and others, and mentioned the fact that Cum-
mington was one of the stations on that Underground Railroad,
over which sped many a despairing fugitive to liberty and light.
The Baptist church, historic shrine and rendezvous of the faithful
ones of anti-slavery days, was burned two weeks before this hun-
dredth anniversary, to the keen regret and sorrow of the people of
Cummington.

The following music w.is sung bv John W. Hutchinson and E.
Li;ster Brown : —

THE OLD FRIENDS ARE THE TRUEST.

Oh, the old friends are the truest,

After all, after all ;
Though the face be not the newest

After all, after all ;
When the fever heat is highest
Or the chilling tide is nighest,
Over all there comes a reaching
Of a friendship, whose sweet teaching
Brings us joy and peace and rest,
For the weary soul the best

After all, after all.

What are all the stings of malice

After all, after all?
There are joys deep in life's chalice

After all, after all.
Should the shadow.s then pursue us
And the sunbeams ne'er come o'er us ?
As our feet pass by the daisies
Shall our souls ne'er count His praises ?
Oh, there is some joy, some rest
For the weary soul the best

After all, after all.

Far better than the old or newest.

After all, after all,
Is that loving friend the truest

After all, after all.
Over calms and storms He sees us
And from danger, too. He frees us.
And amid our faithless serving
Keeps a watchfulness unswerving.
Heaven shows us perfect rest ;
There our weary souls are blest

After all, after all.

Mr. Godwin prefaced the reading of the next poem by remark-
ing upon the high privilege granted to the audience to listen
to the words of the sage, whose utterances at his advanced age
would necessarily be but few more.

AT EIGHTY-SEVEN.

JOHN It. BRYANT.

Alone, alone, why wait I here,

When all most loved have passed away ;
Parents, and wife and children dear,

Brothers and sisters, where are they ?

Gone to the boundless silent past —

And will that past return again.
Restore its conquests wide and vast.

Or is this yearning hope in vain ?

I know not, and I cannot know,

I only know a mighty wave.
Resistless in its onward flow.

Sweeps all things living to the grave.

No voice from that reluctant sphere.

Or whisper of the stilly night
E'er falls upon my waiting ear,

Nor faintest shadow meets my sight.

Still, hope eternal looks away
Beyond the darkness of the tomb,

Where friends departed meet or stray
Through bowers of light and joy and bloom.

Though thus bereft, life still is sweet ;

All nature doth her prnmise fill ;
The wild flowers blossom at my feet ;

These glorious heavens are round me still.

The changing seasons come and go.

Full harvests ripen on the plain,
The autumn woods resume their glow.

And winter snows return again.

Alone, I said; oh, not alone.
For loving friends still wait around.

Sweet voices yet of silvery tone
Greet my dull ear with grateful sound.

61

Goodness and mercy day by day,

From birth unto the present hour
Have followed me, or led the way—

The guidance of Almighty Power.

And now, amid the failing light,

With faltering steps I journey on.
Waiting the coming of the night.

When earthly light and life are gone.

And shall there rise a brighter day

Beyond this scene ot calm and strife.
Where iove and peace shall rule for aye,

And goodness be the rule of life ?

I lean on the Almighty arm

The Good, the Merciful and Just,
His love and care all fears disarm;

On His unchanging law I rest.

On introducing Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, Mr. Godwin made
graceful allusion to the fact that both George William Curtis and
James Russell Lowell, the most eminent of America's literary men
in certain lines, had chosen Prof. Norton as the most fitting liter-
ary executor of their works. After a few introductory remarks
Mr. Norton said : —

A poet can render to his people no greater service than to make
their land dearer to them. This is what Scott did for Scotland,
Burns for Ayrshire, Wordsworth for Cumberland, Westmoreland
and Lancaster, and this is what Bryant has done for Western
Massachusetts. The nature which he knew and loved and by
which he was inspired was that of the rivers, the hills, and the
forests of Berkshire and Hampshire counties ; the character mani-
fest in his poetry and its dominating sentiment are the character
and sentiment which he shared with the people of this region, and
which found expression in their lives. They were a simple, grave,
sedate race, deeply impressed with the seriousness of life, on which

6i

they had but a narrow outlook, full of piety, nurtured on dogma,
and possessed of strong; moral convictions. There were little
variety of experience and little play of feeling in their lives, no
intensity of heroic passion, no splendid lifts of the imagination;
no light of romance in their monotonous days. There was little
grace in them, either of body or mind, but their bodies were vigor-
ous, and their minds intelligent. It was a well-to-do, but not a
light-hearted community ; a community of domestic virtues, of gen-
eral kindliness, of reserved sympathies, but capable of sacrifices
and of occasional shy displays of tenderness; its heart was essen-
tially sound. Of this people, dwelling in this wholesome, beautiful
and rugged country, Bryant is the poet. He uttered for them what
they had within themselves but were incapable of expressing, and
he invested this region with the charm of poetic associations which
will make its pleasant landscape dearer forever to those whose
opening eyes shall first rest upon it. Happy the poet who has this
power ! Happy the poet who becomes thus part of the patriotic
pride of his own people ! Happy he who has indissolubly con-
nected the thought ot himself with a scene, or with some natural
object, with a bird or a flower. The harebell nods with the rhythm
of the verse of Scott, the daffodil dances to the tune of \^'ords-
worth's rhyme, the lark sings Shakespeare's " Hark ! Hark ! " at
heaven's gate, the nightingale never ceabC^ to lament her poet
untimely dead in Keats, each petal of the rose is mscribed with a
poet's name, the mountain daisy bears the message of Burns, the
gold of the dandelion is the brighter for Lowell's verse, but the
fringed gentian blooms for Bryant, and so long as a wild duck
shall cross in its flight the crimson skv of evening, so long will
Bryant's memory float heavenward with it.

The poet-preacher who interprets for us with keen and loving
vision, the meaning of the forces of the universe, gave the following
address : —

ADDRESS BY REV. JOHN WHITE CHADWICK.

I am reminded, Mr. President, of the man who, when an awful
silence fell upon a prayer meeting in Western Pennsylvania, got
up and said that as none of the brethren seemed to have anything
to say, he would make a few remarks upon the tariff. The breth-
ren here have all had enough to say, and none of them too much,
but if they had made a few remarks upon the tariff I should have
been better pleased. For we must all agree that to speak of
Bryant adequately, and not say a good deal about the tariff, is an
impossible thing. Whatever else he was in the variety of his
powers and gifts, he was eminently a tariff reformer, and if any
one had called him a free-trader he would have been thankful for
the praise. There were giants in those days. Horace Greeley
was one, and William CuUen Bryant was another, and when they
met in battle it was like two thunderclouds that burst in
heaven, so terrible was the noise of conflict, and so refreshing the
outpouring of their mutual recriminations. In this company there
are many men of many minds about the tariff, but we are all of
one mind I trust about this, that it is good for a man to have
principles, one way or the other, and lo stand by them through
thick and thin, and this Bryant had and did, and hence in good
part the honor that we give him on this happy day, and if he could
return to us for a little while, rather than have him write another
poem, I would have him write another editorial for the Evening
Post, characterizing in fit terms those Gorman-dizers of the Senate,
who have swallowed their principles and sold their party for a mess
of sugar. That he would be equal to the occasion I have not the
slightest doubt.

I have read of a minister in this section, or some other, who
received a call to another parish, involving an increase of salary.
He said he would pray for light, and after a few days one of the

C4

neighbors overhauled his son and asked liim "if the old man had
made up his mind," and the boy made answer, " He is still praying
for light, but he has packed his trunks.'" Yesterday I went to the
Ashfield dinner, praying for light. To-day when I set out for
Cummington, I packed my trunk and here it is (producing a man-
uscript), for if I am to speak of Bryant as a poet, I would speak
no hasty, unconsidered word. But what can I say of him that has
not been said already ? He was so simple here that we must all
say the same things about him, or some of us say what is not true.
It is a poor business trying to rank our poets first, second, third
and so on. When a few years ago our English friends were trying
to do this for us, and were putting Poe in the first place, ni\' dear
friend, Dr. Hedge, a judge in such high things, wrote to me :
"' Thanatopsis,' our greatest poem, Emerson our greatest poet, Poe
nowhere." But we need them all, as in the perfect orchestra we
need the various instruments of wood, and brass, and silver, Poe's
tinkling triangle among the rest. Bryant was no more an Ameri-
can Wordsworth than Cooper was an American Scott. He was an
American Bryant, with as little of foreign admixture as Whittier or
Emerson. If we endeavor to make out his quality we shall find
that in his poetry as in his politics, the first thing was an absolute
sincerity. What he said of birds and flowers, of rocks and
streams, was not something that he had read in books, but some-
thing that he had seen with his own eyes, and felt with his own
beating heart. Moreo\er, it was given him to tell what he had
seen and felt, shaping his words upon the object or experience as
the cloud shapes itself upon the mountain's top. Here -Was his
second note — a curious felicity, the inagic phrase, that which we
go to Milton for in " Paradise Lost," wading to find it through the
infinite sand of his theology, and when we find it, it is always
Paradise found. In the next place he was a master of poetic
form, albeit he made occasional concessions to the popular jog-
trot measures of the time. He was no experimenter in metres,
but within the narrow range to which he deliberately confined him-
self, he beat out a very noble music, a music, often, of deep organ

(15

tones. If we are as sincere in our criticism as he was in his work,
I think we shall agree that his best things, the things which greatly
please us and affect us, are but few. " Thanatopsis,'' " The Forest
Hymn," the "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood," "The
Water Fowl," " June," " The Death of the Flowers," " The Rivulet "
— n6t many more than these, but these of such pure perfection
that we are entirely happy and content.

" Whose part in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills,
Is that his grave is green."

I never call to mind that magic phrase without wishing that he
might have had that little part of this majestic pomp. The monu-
ment which marks his birthplace ought to mark his grave. But if
he hasn't that he has a great deal more. There is no rock or
stream-, no tree or flower in all this country-side in which he has
not a part. To look on these things is to think of him, their friend
and lover, who made them so much more for us by his im-
perishable song.

He was an American Bryant and he was emphatically a New
England Bryant.

Dante did not embody the mediaeval theology in his " Divina Com-
media '' more perfectly than Bryant embodied in his " Tl)anatopsis "
the New England engagement with death "Memento Mori!" His
poem was a glorious e-\pansion of that injunction which for two
centuries had been the staple of New .England sermons, hymns
and prayers. But it was more than an expansion. It was a trans-
figuration. It dwelt upon "the solemn decorations, all of the
great tomb of man " with such a proud insistence that men
enamored of their glorious beauty forgot the ruinous fatality about
which it wound its various circumstance.

Enjoined to think of death, they found themselves thinking of
life, that great life of nature which does not decorate more solemnly
and tenderly the great tomb of man, than it does his happy cradle
and his spacious home. He sang the fleetingness of our humanity

66

and the stability of nature's course and frame. And lo ! the trees
he loved hasten to their decay, and the hills they clothed with
beauty are more perishable than the poems they inspired in his
New England mind and heart.

George W. Cable's place upon the programme was filled by an
old-time song, "The Old Granite State," which was sung by John
W. Hutchinson.

After the singing of "The Oaks" by the chorus, President G.
Stanley Hall, who in ripened experience and thoughtful methods
shows the value of the sturdy independence of the New England
training among our hills and farms, spoke as follows: —

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALL.

If love is the greatest thing in the world, as Christianity and the
great biologers are now both telling us, and if nature is the all
mother, then to truly love nature must be, if not itself the sum-
mum bonum, at least it must involve most of the virtue and bles-
sings of life.

I think Bryant was a true lover of nature. He said tlie poets
fostered this taste in him, and that man is necessarily a naturalist.
We talk, write and sing much of nature love, but alas mo.st men
are more stranLjers to her than the clergy tell us \xe are aliens from
God, and our recent poetry of nature seems to me to be mostly the
yeast of a degenerate muse.

City life removes children from nature, and a careful in\'entory
shows that they know little of the commonest objects and phe-
nomena. The late report of the British commission showed that
science teaching had relatively declined there in recent years, as it
has in many places here.

We exploit nature and use it for commercial ends, and what we
thus utilize, we cease to worship. The methods of the field
natui'ahst, and of primitive star-gazers, in the days when it was
true that "the undevout astronomer is mad" have been super-
seded by complex in-door laboratory methods. We approach
nature through the mazes of microscopic technique. Probably
never since the world stood have so small a proportion of the
human race felt the power of nature. The beginning of better
things is at hand. Gilbert White of Selborne, Audubon, Thoreau
Richard Jeffries, and Hamilton Gibson, are being read, and the
devoted little band of worshipers at Biologas' shrine have now great
reason to hope again, although modern men and women have a
long road to travel and very much yet to learn.

Let us make an effort to look at this matter from the large

(IS

Aristotelian standpoint of the "spectator of all time and all ex-
istence."' If we could rise to this higher common sense we should
first realize, I think, that children and savages start with a right
view of nature. Mrjst children lo\'e collections, amulets and mas
cots, and are little fetich worshipers and idolaters, and they must be
so as the race has been, or else science and religion alike, which
spring from this common root, w ill be built upon the sand. Chil-
dren embrace trees, give them human attributes, and have cheap
emotional life if the}- do not know flowers. Crocus, anemone,
thyme and rue, jasmine, violet, primrose, daisy, daffodil, amaranth,
poppy, eglantine, heliotrope, laurel, aspen, cypress — these and
scores more are the language of the emotions. They are half
epiphanies, yet veils to the great mysteries which they symbolize.
Froebel saw the scheme of the kindergarten reflected to him as he
gazed into the heart of a strange flower, half hypnotized by it
for hours.

So of birds, the slanderous cuckoo, the boding raven, the dove
and nightingale, the bluebird, that violet of sound, the lark
"clinking his fairy an\i!" at Heaven's gate, the chattering pie,
the eagle ; these, too, are parts of the language of the soul.

The \'ery name goshawk suggests the middle ages as bulbul
does the orient. So insects, pets, domestic animals, and game are
parts of the furniture of every child and savage soul, — as witness
totemism and animal \\orsJiip, and above all the phenomena of
the heavens, clouds, storm, lightning, and sun and moon, which
even Socrates worshiped as gods. In all this Arian, Norse and
savage mythology, of which our literature is made, roots.

Children, as abundant studies show, believe that animals, and
even plants and things, feel and have suitable kinship with them.
How deep this feeling is we had forgotten, but are just beginning
to rediscover, as a lost link in the development of humanity.
Here is the root period of science and religion, and neither can
grow strong and mature unless the sentiments that underlie them
are cultivated on nature.

The greater and higher anything is in the soul, the deeper its
roots must strike.

More love of nature would rescue science from mean and sordid
commercialism, and reveal again its heart of nature out of which
"rolled the burdens of the Bibles old."

Archibald M. Howe, the grandson of Judge Samuel Howe — in
whose office the poet made his first serious attempt at starting in
life — and great-grandson of William Butler, who published the
early childish poems of Bryant in the Gazette, spoke of the law\ er's
phase of Bryant's life as follows : —

ADDRESS OF ARCHIBALD M. HOWE.

The procedure of our Massachusetts courts, and the methods of
purchasing law hereabouts, had been established for a compara-
tively short time, when William Cullen Bryant, a youth of nine-
teen years, was reading law uith a young lawyer nine years older,
who for a few years had been practising his profession in Worth-
ington or wherever he could meet court or clients with the aid of
his horse and chaise.

Soon after the adoption of the Massachusetts Constitution,
followed Shays' Rebellion, which interfered with the regular course of
court practice, and after that the General Court attempted to create
by statute some ne\vfanc;led shorthand method of procedure not
unlike the attempts of the Populists in \\'estern states, who would
abolish lawyers. Joseph Hawle\' and John \\'orthington had done
much to create a system out of the chaos resulting from our revo-
lution, and the change from the government of the king to the
government by the people; but in Bryant's time the bar was
obliged to rely upon few precedents, and to originate much.
Whatever the Massachusetts b;ir might have done, little was printed
or accessible to the men who lived upon these beautiful hills.

Our Massachusetts cases were printed in about twelve volumes ;
to-day we ha\e one hundred and sixi\- volumes of Supreme Court
reports. A few black-letter law books were to be found here and
there, and it is probable that Dane's abridgments may have been
some aid. The few briefs that are preserved, show that the young
law\er of Plainfield and Great Harrington must have depended
upon his power to originate arguments and to investigate authori-
ties that were largely English, and which he could apply to ques-
tions raised in Massachusetts only by the most thorough knowl-
edge of the fundamental principles of a constitution and of laws
then being interpreted and tested for the first time.

However sweet and true were the words of Bryant, written as

71

are the words of poets who have the closest relations with nature
and whose lives seem to be inseparable from all that makes beauti-
lul the hills and valleys of regions like this, I think we must
believe that Bryant was greatly strengthened by his life as a
law)'er facing every day of his life, for at least twelve years, and
until his thirtieth year, the contests and many of the trials and
sufferings of his fellow countrymen.

Surely such discipline impressed upon his life more deeply than
could the exercise of his poems of imagination, the true value of
our new democracy, and whatever his deep sense of patriotism may
have been, these early legal struggles must have impressed upon
his mind the real value of the law as a means of contributing to
the growth of the social order.

The embargo and early restrictive legislation were strong rea-
sons for his consideration of all enactments that would tend to
obstruct trade needlessh', and formed ttie basis of his later advocacy
of free trade.

The few cases reported in the books which give us any information
of Mr. Bryant's career as a lawyer, trying questions of law before
the court of last resort, show that he did his share in thoroughly
presenting all possible points to the court for its judgment; that
he used the older books, but that he used his reasoning as effect-
ively as any of his brothers at the bar.

I do not believe it is true that he left the profession because he
was not sustained by the court in the case where he lost on a
point of special pleading. The court treated him with great con-
sideration, and he was entitled to a chance to maintain his suit.
Such a statement about Mr. Bryant is not in accord with his
nature. He left the law as a profession because he could give larger
and more effective expression of his views of the laws of man, and
of nature as an American editor, seated in a chair where few have
ever sat in this country, the chair of a truly independent editor,
with large views of his native country and his fellow countrymen,
with a respect for progress through the aid of law in its highest sense,
law that he promoted and interpreted by his noble life, and with

72

the pen in the hand of a strong man fearing no one. The Evening
Post presented to its readers views concerning a proper use of law
that are as true of to-day as of the years and days when they were
written, and any man who will attempt to belittle such opinions as
the opinions of a theorist or a poet will have little to comfort him
as true progress towards freedom is being made. You have heard
to-day the words of men and women of noble lives and of rare
power, expressing to you some of the charms of Bryant's poetry ;
for every word we thank them. We who sit mute, or whose gifts
are not such that we can express our deepest thoughts, look upward
to these hills, wander through these groves of maple trees, and as
our hearts beat quicker, say to ourselves that whatever strength these
hills gave to the men of the earlier years of our century must not
be lost in these later days. If " there were giants in those days,"
we will not allow American citizenship to belong to pigmies.

Bryant, the American citizen, shall be the exemplar for many
thousands of those who live to read his words, not as a poet only,
but as a man who has lived the life of a lawyer of high ideals, an
editor of transcendent manliness, and always of a private citizen of
more power than many public men of high esteem.

May I thank you, my fellow citizens of Cummington (though I do
not know you personally), for allowing me to come before the good
people of this neighborhood from an obscure city law office, to try
to express in some measure the power for good that can come from
the life of an upright lawyer. May we not hope in spite of all the
temptations of the lawyer of to-day that patriotism may be again
and again a stronger motive for the action of lawyers, and that
the present disgraceful practices in Legislatures, which are pre-
sented too often by lawyers, may soon be overthrown, if American
citizens, who as lawyers or as laymen may learn from lives like
William Cullen Bryant the value of the freedom that comes from
respect for law.

73

James H. Eckels spoke for the town of Princeton, 111., its illus-
trious citizen, John H. Bryant and his brothers who left the old
homestead to become the pioneers of that Western town.

Henry S. Gere, the veteran editor of the county paper, the
Hampshire Gazette, which is the senior of Bryant by a few years,
and shares with his poetry, the homage of the county people, gave
the following sketch of Bryant's early connection with that paper : —

ADDRESS OF HENRY S. GERE.

An examination of the files of the Gazette from 1806 to 1815
shows four of Mr. Bryant's poems. The first one appears in the
issue of March 13, 1807. It has this introduction, probably given
by the editor ■ " A Poem composed by a lad twelve years old, to be
exhibited at the close of the winter school, in presence of the mas-
ter, the minister of the parish, and a number of private gentlemen.''

This poem bears the date of Cummington, February 19, 1807,
and has the signature of C. B.

In the Biographical Sketch of J\Ir. Bryant, published in 1880, it
is btated that this poem was written in his tenth year, but as it bears
the date of 1807, and was published in that year, it must have been
wrillen when he was in his thirteenth year or, as the caption says,
"by a lad of twelve years.'"

In the issue of January 17, 18 10, appears the poem entitled
"The Genius of Columbia."' It is dated Cummington, January
18, 1810, and the signature is W. C. B.

In the paper of July 15, 1812, appears " An Ode for the Fourth
of July" — Tune, "Ye Gentlemen of England." The editor intro-
duces it in these words : " \\'ant of room last week obliged us to
delay the publication of the following elegant and patriotic ode,
from the pen of Mr. \\'illiam C. Bryant, son of Dr. Bryant of
Cummington."

In the paper of July 12, 1815, appears another ode by IMr. Bryant,
with this introduction by the editor : " The following ode, the
production of Mr. William C. Bryant, a young gentleman to whom
we have been repeatedly indebted for his elegant and poetic effu-
sions, was received at too late an hour to occupy the place it so
well deserves in our festivals. We cannot, however, refrain from
giving it to our readers.' This ode consists of five stanzas, and
was on the return of peace, the war between the United States
and Great Britain having closed a short time previous.

75

There may have been other of Mr. Bryant's early poems pub-
lished in the Gazette in those years, but they are not complete, and
in some instances original poems were published without any signa-
ture or date, to indicate their authorship.

We stand to-day upon consecrated ground. In the language of
President Lincoln on the battlefield of Gettysburg — " The world
will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can
never forget what he did here." He was the inspired poet
of these hills. He roamed these fields, he traversed these for-
ests, he climbed these rocks, he ascended and reascended these
hills, until thev became to him the dearest of friends. He drank
from nature the essential spirit of poetry, an appreciation of its
own wondrous beauty and completeness, and a deep reverence for
the omnipotent power that created it. He found pleasure and
companionship everywhere — in the fields, in the woods, by the
streams, in the valleys, on the mountain tops. In the trees
and the rocks, in the grasses and the flowers, in the growing crops
and the ripened fruits, in the playfulness of youth, and the serenity
of age, in the babbling brook and the starry heavens he found
those sublime thoughts which illuminate his writings and make his
name a sweet and enduring remembrance.

Did he find enjoyment in the seclusion of these hills and the
solitude of these forests ?

" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods ;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore ;
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep pool, and music in the roar
Of foaming waters."

He found them all, and more. He held communion with the
visible forms of nature ; aye, and with the invisible. What makes
the genuine poet? Not accident nor chance, nor caprice, nor
freak. It is rather the touch of inspiration.

" In the still air the music lies unheard ;

In the rough marble beauty hides unseen ;
To make the music, and the beauty, needs
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen.

70

Great Master, touch us by thy skillful hand,

Let not the music that is in us die ;
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us, nor let

Hidden and lost, thy form *ithin us lie."

It is a pleasure to believe that in the working out of the great
problem of human development God selects and prepares his
agents to do their appointed work. He gave us Washington to
carry to a successful issue the War of the Revolution, to establish
a nation founded upon the freedom and equality of itian. He gave
us Lincoln to guide the ship of state through the stormy years of
the Rebellion, with that marvelous wisdom which has been and ever
will be the admiration of mankind. He gave us Grant to lead
the Union armies with that matchless skill and success which have
been the wonder of the world. So in his own good time, he gave
us Bryant, to sweeten, and broaden, and ennoble, and uplift, the
minds and hearts of the people of the nation He founded and
saved. He lived to see the full measure of his fame as a poet, as
a philanthropist, as a journalist, .as a statesman, as a patriot, as a
man, spread over all the land. He lived to see the full fruition of
his labors as a coworker in the greatest philanthropic movement
in the civilization of the age. He lived to pass " the bound of
man's appointed years," and, in the fullness of time, like a shock
of corn ripened unto the harvest.

" Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done,
Serenely to his final rest has passed ;
While the soft memory of his virtues, yet
Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set."

" And I am glad that he has lived thus long,

And glad that he has gone to his reward ;
Nor can I deem that nature did him wrong

Softly to disengage the vital cord ;
For, when his hand grew palsied, and his eye
Dark with the mists of age, it was his time to die."

77

The exercises closed with the singing of the following hymn to
the tune " Uxbridge : " —

" Our father; to Thy love we owe
All that is fair and good below ;
Life, and the health that makes life sweet
Are blessings from thy mercy seat.

" Oh, Giver of the quickening rain.
Oh, Ripener of the golden grain,
From Thee the cheerful day spring flows.
Thy balmy evening brings repose.

" Thy frosts arrest. Thy tempests chase
The plagues that waste our helpless race,
Thy softer breath, o'er land and deep
Wakes nature from her winter sleep.

" Yet deem we not that thus alone
Thy bounty and Thy love are shown.
For we have learned with higher praise
.Vnd holier names to speak Thy ways."

llRVANT.

CHILDREN'S MEMORIAL EXERCISES.

PROGRAMME.

I. Opening Hymn, "The Love o£ (,;i>d is over all His Worlds."

Read by Mrs. M. C. Stutson.

.... AimPESS. . . . \V. W. Orcutt.

3. Me.morial PaI'ER. . >nss Fanny L. Rogers.

4. Composition. Grace Shavif.

5. June. . . Clara Snow.

6. ValilDICTorv ADDRfess. Will R. Lyman.

7. FoREbT Hv.M.v. . Annie Stevens.

8. Innocent Child with the snow-white flower. Alfred R. Packard.

9. Memorial Extracts.

Edith Streeter. Elsie Packard. Marcia Jenkins. Arthur Packard.

Fred Randall. Oreorge W'hitniarsh. Flarry McCoy.

Lena Shaw.

10. Hym.N'. 11 '/littler.

11. Thanatopsis. . . . Lena Packard.

12. Fkvant's Address to the Sunday School at West Cu.m.mington.

Nellie Bryant.

13. The Hurricane. i''.rnest Sears.

14. Robert OE Lincoln. Flora Packard.

15. The Rivulet. Herbert Streeter.

16. Battle Hymn of the Republic. . Julia Ward Jh'wc.

17. Julia Ward Howe's Poem, " The Flag," recited by Edith Streeter,

in honor of the author, who is expected to be present.

We arrived at Cummington in time to take supper and to attend
a children's concert at the village church. There was a local
orchestra of four or five pieces, and a chorus, both of which also
took part in the exercises next day ; and there were recitations
from Br3'ant's poems and compositions by the children, all under
the management of a tireless young lady resident. Looking at the
children as they were grouped in the front pews, I was struck by
the preponderance of pure New England types, such a collection of
which I had not seen in twenty years, or before faniilar districts in
New England were involved by foreign immigration. So I was
not surprised next day to learn from Mr. Tower's admirable address
that "the town is still one of pure New England stock, and out of
two hundred voters, only three are not of American birth. . . .
It is still a farming community, as it was a hundred years ago, and
the farmers win a scanty living from rebellious soil." To me this
children's concert, with its manifestation of the pure, native stock,
was the most interesting feature of the Bryant Centenary.

Arthur Sted.man, in " The Dial."

BRYANT MEMORIAL COMMITTEE.

J. Wesley Gurnev, President.
Henrietta S. Nahmer, Secretary.
William H. Shaw, Trcisun-r.
William W. Orcutt.
Lorenzo H. Tower.